India

Delhi police raids homes of ‘The Wire’ editors Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu, Jahnavi Sen

Siddharth Varadarajan. [File Photo]

New Delhi: Residences of The Wire editors including MK Venu, Jahnavi Sen, and Siddharth Varadarajan, the founder of the news portal, were raided by Delhi Police on Monday.

The raids were conducted in connection with its report that BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya used his special privileges at tech giant Meta to take down over 700 social media posts.

The story was subsequently retracted, The Indian Express reported. The report quoting the police said that they will be checking their devices and collecting evidence in connection with the probe.

Police also said nobody has been detained, the report said.

On Friday, Malviya submitted a complaint to the special commissioner of police (crime) against The Wire, Vardarajan, and editors Siddharth Bhatia, Venu, and Jahnavi Sen.

The journalists have been booked under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery with the purpose of cheating), 469 (forgery for harming reputation), 471 (using forged document), 500 (defamation), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention).

Despite a categorical denial from Meta that the report had cited fake documents, The Wire published follow-up stories and its retraction and apology did not mention him “despite tarnishing my image”, Malviya was quoted as saying.

A day after Malviya’s complaint, The Wire had filed a complaint against its researcher Devesh Kumar with the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police. “The complaint has been filed against Devesh Kumar who is allegedly involved in the fabrication of documents and forgery. This is in connection with all the Meta stories that were published this month,” said an officer, as per The Indian Express report.

In October, The Wire claimed Meta had given certain special privileges to Malviya through its XCheck programme, where he could take down any content on Meta that he thought was critical of the government or the BJP while having the privilege to post anything without Instagram rules applying to him.

The Wire claimed that its reports were based on a document “sourced” from an alleged Meta insider.

 

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