NewsClick founder and editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha has been accused of several grave allegations in a chargesheet filed against him by the Delhi police.
According to the chargesheet, the digital news organisation propogated “information warfare” in order to “subvert [India’s] psyche” on behalf of the Chinese government. This was allegedly done through, among other things, funding Naxalite and Kashmiri separatist organisations, spreading a disinformation campaign on Covid-19, the “stoking and sustaining” of the 2020 Delhi riots and fomenting the farmers’ protest movement across India.
The chargesheet was filed by the police on March 29 but became available in the public domain in the first week of May.
Scroll’s examination of the chargesheet revealed that these sweeping accusations rest on shaky grounds. This is because they are based only on the evidence given by eight witnesses, yet to be proven in a court, without any corroboration. Moreover, they are grounded in broad inferences drawn by the police drawing from the pre-conceived notion that Purkayastha and his associates conspired to “weaken and disrupt … every aspect of State apparatus … leading to its destabilisation, decimation and disintegration”.
Raids and arrest
Purkayastha was arrested on October 3 last year along with NewsClick’s human resources head, Amit Chakraborty, after raids by the Delhi police on over 40 staffers and contributors of the digital news organisation.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
