‘Intention clearly to browbeat’

PUCL condemns police action against The Wire, its editors

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has strongly condemned the raids on the residences and office of senior editors of the news portal, The Wire, in New Delhi and Mumbai and manhandling of the lawyer, Shadan Farasat and other staff members of the news website.

“What is shocking is that despite the unambiguous retraction and the public candour accompanying the retraction, the Delhi police have used the complaint filed by Malviya as an opportunity to register a more sinister FIR involving cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy as a cover to target The Wire and its staff,” PUCL said in a statement.

“The fact that the Delhi police decided to dramatically raid the residence of Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and others shows that their intention was not to pursue an enquiry but to conduct a witch hunt by making a spectacle of the search. The intention was clearly to browbeat the Wire’s Editors and to scare other media persons of their fates if they dared to challenge the ruling interests,” the statement continued.

The statement also highlighted that the Crime Branch did not follow the requisite procedure as it took away devices without providing any hash value - the numeric value that uniquely identifies data lodged in an electronic device at any given point in time. There are legitimate concerns that absence of a hash value leaves the door open to planting material on the digital devices.

They also said that the seizure of devices raises serious privacy concerns and is violative of Article 20(3) and Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. It said that the incident is “nothing but another brazen attempt to intimidate and silence independent media from performing its professional role.”

The PUCL has demanded that the Delhi police cease this persecution in the guise of a prosecution, drop all charges and return the seized electronic devices seized during the raids back to the people from whom they were seized