Following a complaint from the BJP’s Amit Malviya, the Delhi Police searched the houses of two editors of the news website “The Wire” on Monday evening.
The founding editors of The Wire, Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu, had their residences raided by the police, who also took their laptops and smartphones.
Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP’s IT Cell, filed a complaint against them, leading to charges of cheating and forgery being brought against them. The Wire “forged documents to malign and tarnish (ed)” his reputation, according to the complaint.
The Wire recently withdrew a number of investigative stories that claimed that Mr. Malviya had been granted special access by Meta, the parent company of social media giants WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, to remove content that he believed were critical of the BJP.
Mr. Malviya claimed that The Wire had also published a false report asserting that the BJP had been using the superhuman app “Tek Fog” to intercept social media posts. Critical errors in their reporting were outlined by Meta and a number of other experts.
The Wire, in a statement, said it had been given “fraudulent” information. “Whether the person who brought all the material to The Wire deceived us at anyone’ else’s behest or acted on his own is a matter that will be subjected to judicial process in due course. The malintent to discredit The Wire is obvious,” the statement said.
Source: NDTV
