NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayasha arrested Tuesday night
Police in Delhi, the Indian capital, have raided the homes of prominent journalists and authors as part of an investigation into NewsClick’s investment.
NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayasha and a colleague were arrested. Police confiscated laptops and mobile phones.
Authorities are reportedly investigating allegations that NewsClick received illegal budget from China, an allegation it denies.
Critics say it is an intentional attack on press freedom.
Launched in 2009, NewsClick is an independent news and data outlet known for being critical of the government. In 2021, the fiscal government conducted a search for allegations of violation of India’s foreign direct investment rules.
Tuesday’s coordinated raids on 30 sites are among the largest and most extensive to make Indian media headlines in recent years. Police later proved that they had arrested Mr. Purkayastha and Amit Chakravarty, the website’s human resources manager.
Image source, EPA
One of the journalists, Urmilesh (center), leaves a police station in central Delhi after being questioned.
“A total of 37 male suspects were interrogated at the facility, nine female suspects were interrogated at their respective places of stay and virtual devices, documents, etc. were seized/recovered for examination,” police said.
Opposition leaders accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of “still attacking the media. “But Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said the investigative agencies were simply doing their job.
Journalists Abhisar Sharma, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Aunindyo Chakravarty, Urmilesh, Bhasha Singh, satirist Sanjay Rajura and historian Sohail Hashmi were also interviewed. Some were taken to the police station.
Searches were carried out at the site’s premises in Delhi, news firm ANI reported.
In Mumbai, the space of activist Teesta Setalvad was also registered. Setalvad has long fought for those who suffered from the fatal 2002 riots in the state of Gujarat and has written articles critical of the government for NewsClick.
A person close to Purkayastha told the BBC that more than 15 police officers arrived at the publisher’s house at 6:30 a. m. local time (01:00 GMT).
“They provided him with warrants and documents, interrogated him for several hours and took away all the electronic devices they discovered in his home,” they said. News agencies later showed police taking him away in a vehicle.
Rajura’s lawyer, Ilin Saraswat, said the comedian raided at the same time and police confiscated his laptop, two phones, DVDs of his previous homework and documents.
“Police said Rajora is listed in the ongoing investigation, but as he worked with the website, he will be questioned. We have obtained a copy of the police report,” he added.
The raids are reportedly related to a complaint filed against NewsClick in August after a New York Times article claimed they had secured investments from an American millionaire to spread “Chinese propaganda. “
Image source, Getty Images
More than 30 have been raided in Delhi
He claimed that Neville Roy Singham worked intensively with the “Chinese government’s media machine” and used his network of nonprofit teams and shell corporations to “fund his propaganda around the world. “
A complaint has reportedly been filed against the online page under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA, a draconian anti-terrorism law that sees it on the verge of bail. NewsClick has dismissed all the allegations as false.
All the other people who were raided were related to NewsClick: some are employees, while others have worked on freelance projects.
Prabir Purkayastha, its founder and editor-in-chief, is the author of several books and a founding member of the Delhi Scientific Forum. During the 1975 state of emergency, when civil liberties were suspended, he was imprisoned along with several opposition politicians.
Bhasha Singh is an activist and journalist who has reported extensively on waste collection and farmer suicides. She has accused the government of being anti-women and gave the impression in a NewsClick video on Monday of expressing fear over the growing tendency of ruling BJP members to congratulate the guy who assassinated Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.
Abhisar Sharma is a video journalist known for his critical perspectives on the government. He worked for BBC Hindi before applying for the NDTV news channel. One of his last videos covered widespread protests by civil servants opposing a new pension plan.
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a writer, journalist and filmmaker, is best known for his investigations into billionaire tycoon Gautam Adani and is facing several defamation lawsuits filed by the industrialist. Earlier this year, he spoke in a report by Hindenburg Research which claimed that corporations owned by Mr Adani had engaged in decades of “blatant” stock market manipulation and accounting fraud, allegations denied by the industrialist perceived as close to Prime Minister Modi.
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Sanjay Rajura is a popular comedian who has worked in Bollywood and is part of the comedy-music trio Aisi Taisi Democracy (Democracy Be Damned). Rajura is known for his scathing political satire that criticizes India’s ruling component. His paintings cover topics such as caste, masculinity, freedom of speech and fake news.
Sohail Hashmi is a historian, activist and filmmaker who has been organizing heritage conferences and walks on Delhi’s history for over a decade. This month, Sahmat, an accepted with his bosses, is organizing programs to mark the 75th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination.
Irfan Khan is a political cartoonist who has spent three decades running for some of India’s leading English- and Hindi-language newspapers and TV channels. His cartoons use satire to comment on major existing events and he has also worked with the Election Commission of India on voter awareness campaigns. .
Police have not yet completed the main points of their investigation, and it is unclear when they will, but the raids have angered many. Some saw parallels with police raids during the 1975 emergency under Indira Gandhi.
Journalists and media outlets condemned the raids as an example of arbitrary custom and government intimidation. “
The Press Club of India was “deeply concerned” and suggested the government “provide details”.
In a joint statement, the National Alliance of Journalists and the Delhi Journalists Union accused the NewsClick government for “its policy on workers’ and farmers’ issues. “
Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, several media outlets have been investigated for alleged financial irregularities, raising fears about press freedom in the world’s largest democracy.
Earlier this year, tax officials raided the BBC’s offices in India, wondering about the organisation’s business operations in the country. The raids in Delhi and Mumbai came weeks after a documentary criticised Modi’s role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat.
The fiscal government also accused the Dainik Bhaskar newspaper of tax evasion in 2021 following its policy of handling the Covid-19 pandemic by the government.
Reporters Without Borders, a journalists’ advocacy group, ranked India 161st in its press freedom index this year. He said the situation in the country had deteriorated from “problematic” to “very bad” and to that of Tajikistan (153) and Turkey. (165th).
“One of the reasons NewsClick is independent is that I think it is critical of the government in power, because at the moment no media outlet can criticise the government,” Rana Ayyub, an investigative journalist in Mumbai, told BBC Newshour.
He explained that one of the reasons for the raids against the organization was “because it publishes data critical of the Modi government, especially in the last two or three years. “
Additional information via Meryl Sebastian in Kochi and Simon Fraser in London
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