The Delhi Police Special Cell filed a chargesheet on 30th March in the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) case against Prabir Purkayastha, the founder and editor of NewsClick, who was apprehended by the authorities on 3rd October last year along with Human Resources (HR) chief Amit Chakraborty for receiving illicit funding from China that was transferred via the United States. The chargesheet included NewsClick, the news portal, as an additional accused party.
The police team brought two trunks filled with over 8000 pages of the chargesheet to the court. The chargesheet names editors, co-founders, and staff members of the news platform, authorities said. Neville Roy Singham, a billionaire from the United States, has also been identified as the “accused.”
The chargesheet was filed before the Additional Sessions Judge Dr Hardeep Kaur, in Patiala House Court in Delhi. Submitting the chargesheet, Special Public Prosecutors Advocate Akhand Pratap Singh and Suraj Rathi told the court that the chargesheet names Prabir Purkayastha, founder and editor-in-chief of NewsClick, and PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt Ltd as an accused.
The prosecutors also requested the court to defer taking cognizance because sanctions under section 45 of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and section 196 (for prosecution for offence against state and for criminal conspiracy to commit such offence) of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) are awaited. They said that charges under these sections will be filed in the form of a supplementary chargesheet very soon.
HEaring the pleas, the court fixed April 16, 2024, for arguments on the cognizance point.
The Delhi Police were given an extension by the Patiala House Court in Delhi to file the chargesheet by December of last year. Police were given a two-month extension in February of this year, followed by a 20-day extension.
Under provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the UAPA, the Special Cell filed a formal complaint in this respect in August. The two were placed under judicial custody for a month in November. Purkayastha’s “friendship since 1991” with alleged rights activist Gautam Navlakha, who is being held under house arrest in connection with the Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case, was also highlighted in the First Information Report (FIR). The police mentioned that he has been a shareholder in NewsClick since 2018.
The Special Cell’s FIR against Prabir Purkayastha included a detailed list of assertions, including attempts to portray Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir as “not parts of India,” attacks on the Indian government’s efforts to combat Covid, financial support for the farmers’ agitation, and “putting up a spirited defence of legal cases” against Chinese telecom companies like Vivo and Xiaomi.
Funds to disseminate propaganda favouring China are reportedly received by NewsClick. The UAPA and the anti-terror law have been invoked against the news company. NewsClick is charged with obtaining more than Rs 80 crore from Chinese companies.
According to the FIR, the news outlet accepted funding from Chinese organizations with the intention of “disrupting the sovereignty of India” and inciting animosity toward the nation. Earlier, a Delhi court gave police a further 10 days to finish their probe into NewsClick founder and editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha. Amit Chakravarty, the chief of NewsClick’s HR department and former accuser turned approver, has had his judicial custody extended for an additional ten days.
According to police, raids were carried out in October 2023 at 88 sites in Delhi and seven other states against the suspects listed in the FIR and those whose names came up during data analysis. In addition, Purkayastha is accused of working with the People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS) to undermine the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Purkayastha and Chakraborty were arrested into custody after a full day of searches at more than fifty locations associated with the news portal, its staff and its contributors. The police reported that 46 “suspects” had had their “digital devices” confiscated and were being questioned following the searches, which took place around Mumbai and the National Capital Region. The Delhi office of the news outlet was also sealed by the police.
“Foreign funds in crores have been infused illegally in India by Indian and foreign entities inimical to India in pursuance of conspiracy with the intention to disrupt sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, to cause disaffection against India and to threaten the unity, integrity, security of India,” the Special Cell established in its remand application, citing “secret inputs.”
Arunachal Pradesh was depicted as a disputed area on a new map of India, and the accused were “in direct touch with each other” and “discussing how to create a new map of India without Kashmir,” according to the remand application. They had also received “more than Rs 115 crore” in the “guise of foreign funds” for this purpose. Chakraborty has become an approver in the case, after Purkayastha and he have both been in judicial confinement since November.
The People’s Dispatch Portal, owned and maintained by M/S PPK Newsclick Studio Private Limited has been used for purposefully peddling false narratives through paid news in lieu of crores of rupees of illegally routed foreign funds as part of a conspiracy, based on Delhi Police’s Special Cell’s FIR against NewsClick’s founder and Editor-in-Chief, Prabir Purkayastha.