On Delhi Police conducting raids at different premises linked to NewsClick, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, "Freedom of the press is fundamental to any democracy...What happened yesterday was not only unfortunate, it was a disgrace to our democracy and to our traditions of freedom...
There is something really wrong with this kind of approach...It is the action of a very insecure and frankly autocratic govt...It's truly unacceptable."
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The Delhi Police said NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha was arrested after it found evidence that the online news portal pushed a "global agenda" to show that Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir are not part of India.
In the remand application for his arrest which was exclusively accessed by 'India Today' on Wednesday, the Delhi Police alleged that they have email trails between Prabir Purkayastha and American tech mogul Neville Roy Singham discussing how to create a map of India where Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh would be shown as "disputed territories".
Prabir Purkayastha was arrested on Tuesday along with Amit Chakravarty, the Human Resources Head at NewsClick. Their arrests came after the police conducted raids on the NewsClick premises and the houses of several journalists and employees linked with the news portal.
According to the police, Prabir Purkayastha and Amit Chakravarty received foreign funds amounting to more than Rs 115 crore to create the said map.
NewsClick received foreign funds amounting to crores since 2018 through "illegal means", said the police. It said the funds were "fraudulently infused" by Neville Roy Singham through a complex web of several entities.
The Delhi Police also alleged that Gautam Navlakha, a shareholder in NewsClick, had worked with banned naxal organisations and had an anti-national nexus with Gulam Nabi Fai, an ISI agent.
According to the police, the foreign funds received by Prabir Purkayastha were routed to Gautam Navlakha and others, including activist Teesta Setalvad.
The Delhi Police sought the remand of Prabir Purkayastha and Amit Chakravarty for 15 days, saying they needed to be interrogated over the 4.3 lakh emails which the Enforcement Directorate extracted from the electronic devices it seized from the NewsClick employees.
The two accused would be interrogated over the contents of the email which showed a conspiracy to create disaffection among various sections of society, said the police.
Further, it added that the raids at the NewsClick office are yet to be completed and they will continue after the questioning of Prabir Purkayastha and Amit Chakravarty.
The funds were also used to disrupt public life and damage public property through the farmers’ protest, said the police.
Further, Prabir Purkayastha engaged in a conspiracy to sabotage the electoral process during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. NewsClick also propagated a "false narrative" to discredit the efforts of the central government in containing the Covid-19 pandemic, said the police.
These "false narratives" were peddled through the 'People’s Dispatch Portal' which is owned and maintained by NewsClick using the "illegally routed" foreign funds, it added.
Delhi Police Special Cell had initially sought 15-day police custody for the two, alleging that there was electronic evidence suggesting a “conspiracy” against the sovereignty of India.
The police said “secret inputs have been received that foreign funds in crores have been infused illegally in India by Indian and foreign entities inimical to India in pursuance of conspiracy with the intention to disrupt sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, to cause disaffection against India and to threaten the unity, integrity, security of India”.
The remand application was filed in the court of additional sessions judge Hardeep Kaur at the Patiala House Court by special cell ACP Lalit Mohan Negi. It claimed that the Enforcement Directorate had extracted data from several electronic devices during the course of its investigation into a case that was lodged on August 14. And this data in five hard disks contained 4.27 lakh emails from Purkayastha and Chakravarty, it claimed.
The Enforcement Directorate had earlier attached the portal’s assets after initiating a probe into its funding. The action had come after The New York Times alleged the news site was among Chinese propaganda outlets being funded by American tech mogul Neville Roy Singham. Union ministers Anurag Thakur and Rajeev Chandrasekhar had held a press conference on NYT’s report to claim China, the Indian National Congress and NewsClick are part of an “umbilical cord”. Read all about it here.
However, the police claimed there was a larger conspiracy that the accused hatched along with Neville Roy Singham “to create disaffection among various sections of society”. In a plot similar to the one we heard during the Bhima Koregaon case, the police application hints at collusion with “banned terrorist organizations so that unity, integrity, security, and sovereignty of the country can be threatened”, reports 'NewsLaundry.com'.
It states:
“The analysis of the e-mails further shows that Neville Roy Singham, Prabir Purkayastha and Amit Chakravarty are in direct touch with each other wherein they were found to be discussing how to create a map of India without Kashmir and to show Arunachal Pradesh as disputed area.
To achieve the above objective, the accused persons in the guise of foreign funds received more than Rs 115 crore. In the companies named as PPK Newsclick, GSPAN India, JJ enterprises, Virtunet System.”
The police alleged that the accused made attempts to “discredit” the government’s Covid management. “A false narrative has been propagated to discredit the efforts of the Indian government to contain Covid-19 pandemic.”
Meanwhile, the police said it had searched 88 locations in Delhi, and seven locations in other states on Wednesday, and gathered more electronic “evidence”. It said Purkayastha and Chakravarty need to be confronted with all this material and questioned to “unearth the conspiracy”.
Naming Navlakha, the remand application stated that he was a shareholder in NewsClick since its inception in 2018.
“(He) remained involved in anti-Indian and unlawful activities such as actively supporting banned Naxal organisations and having anti-national nexus,” it said.
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