After several hours of questioning, the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakravarty while other senior journalists were let off on Tuesday, October 3.
Senior journalists, who were picked for questioning regarding a UAPA case against the online media organisation include Urmilesh, Aunindyo Chakravarty, Abhisar Sharma, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, along with historian Sohail Hashmi.
Purkayastha was brought to the portal’s south Delhi office in the presence of a forensic team. Subsequently, the Delhi Police Special Cell sealed the NewsClick office.
While Sharma refused to speak to the media, Thakurta said he worked as a consultant with NewsClick. He said nine policemen arrived at his house in Gurugram at 6:30 in the morning for questioning.
“I came with them voluntarily to the special cell of the Delhi Police. The same set of questions were asked over and over again… if I were an employee of Newsclick, I said ‘no, I’m a consultant’… After I came here I learnt that an FIR has been lodged apparently under the Unlawful Activities Preventions Act…,” he told reporters.
On Tuesday morning Delhi Police Special Cell conducted raids at 30 offices and residences of journalists associated with the online media outlet NewsClick. Houses of former and current employees were raided. Officials seized electronic evidence, laptops, mobile phones, pen drives and took data dumps of hard disks from the NewsClick offices.
Delhi Police also questioned senior CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury’s staffer’s son who works with the NewsClick.
They were questioned regarding their past and current news reports including the COVID-19 coverage and farmers’ protests. Delhi Police sources said the raids, still ongoing, are based on a case registered on August 17 under UAPA and other sections of IPC against NewsClick.
It invokes several sections (13, 16, 17, 18, and 22) of UAPA, along with 153(a) (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) and 120 (b) (party to a criminal conspiracy other than a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence) of the Indian Penal Code.
Various organisations representing the interests of journalists condemned the Delhi Police raids on news portal NewsClick and its scribes claiming that it was an attempt to “muzzle” press freedom.
Press Club of India, Network of Women in Media, India (NWMIndia) has expressed shock over the raids. Tweeting about the incident, NWMIndia said, “Journalists, activists and artists who speak truth to power are being unrelentingly harassed and persecuted by the government, while pliant and sycophantic media persons and media houses are being nurtured. This campaign to quell dissent has to stop.”
The Editors Guild of India tweeted grave concerns over the raids and subsequent detaining of senior NewsClick journalists. “EGI is deeply concerned about the raids at the residences of senior journalists on the morning of October 3, and the subsequent detention of many of those journalists. Urges the state to follow due process, and not to make draconian criminal laws as tools for press intimidation,”
Probe agencies independent, says minister
Union information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur on Tuesday, October 3, said probe agencies in the country are independent and work as per law, referring to the raids conducted at the premises connected with online portal NewsClick in Delhi.
“I need not justify the raid. If someone has done something wrong, probe agencies work on it… Nowhere is it written that if you have got money through illegal manner or done something objectionable, then probe agencies cannot investigate that,” Thakur said.
