Invoking the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the Delhi Police’s Special Cell arrested the founder and editor-in-chief of NewsClick, Prabir Purkayastha and Human Resources head Amit Chakravarty on Tuesday after conducting searches at over 90 locations across the country, including the premises of senior journalists associated with the online news portal.
The duo were later produced before the court of Dr Hardeep Kaur, LD Additional Session Judge, Patiala House Court remanded to police custody for 7 days.
The Delhi Police’s Special Cell, had, however, demanded 15 days’ police custody of both the accused persons.
While pressing for a 15-day remand, the counsel for the police told the court that secret inputs revealed that Prabir Purkayastha, Neville Roy Singham and some other Chinese employees of Neville Roy Singham-owned Shanghai-based company by the name of StarStream exchanged mails, exposing their intent to show Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as not being part of India.
In the remand copy, produced before the court, the police stated, “The analysis of the e-mails further shows that Neville Roy Singham, Prabir Purkayastha and Amit Chakraborty 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 a disputed area.”
“To achieve the above objective the accused persons in the guise of foreign funds received more than Rs 115 crore,” the police stated further in the remand copy.Meanwhile, Newsclick, in a statement issued on its website stated that the online news portal is an independent news website and “does not publish any news or information at the behest of any Chinese entity or authority, directly or indirectly”.
Earlier, on Tuesday, the Editors Guild of India raised concerns over the crackdown against NewsClick saying it was “yet another attempt to muzzle the media.” Earlier, on August 10, a report in the New York Times had alleged that NewsClick was part of a global network that receives funding from American billionaire Neville Roy Singham.
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