New Delhi, October 04, 2023 (PPI-OT): NewsClick’s founder Prabir Purkayastha and its HR head Amit Chakravarty have been sent to seven-day police custody following their arrest in a UAPA case against the organisation.
However, the 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 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.
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”.
Meanwhile, in a statement, NewsClick hit out at the attempt to “stifle fearless voices”, saying that no agency has been able to establish any offence against the organisation so far despite scrutinising a large amount of evidence over the last two years.
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