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 2023 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.
What the FIR in the Newsclick – Chinese funding case said
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 extended his judicial custody 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 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 a conspiracy 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, both have 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.
The 8,000-page chargesheet reveals the seeds of conspiracy and who really wants to end democracy in India
The chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police Special Cell, parts of which OpIndia has seen, details the origins of the conspiracy hatched by Prabir Purkayastha, Neville Roy Singham and other accused. The chargesheet traces the beginning of the conspiracy from an email dump that ED shared with the Special Cell. One email from the 29th of June 2016 sent by Prabir Purkayastha to Neville Roy Singham marks the beginning of the conspiracy according to the Special Cell.
The subject of the email recovered by ED was “Social Media Group in India”.
In the email, Prabir tells Neville that a group in ‘their’ media project should focus only on tools – which is collating and analysing data. Second, he suggests a dedicated team for social media campaigns. The budget he allocates for the social media campaigns is anywhere between $60,000 to $80,000.
The chargesheet says that this innocuous email becomes relevant because soon after, a NewsClick article was shared over email on the 17th of September 2016 which spoke of creating mass movements in the typical Maoist style. In the article, NewsClick wrote that the Left needs to be at the forefront of such ‘struggles’.
Only 2 days later, on the 19th of September, a far more sinister email was exchanged, which revealed who really wanted to end democracy in India. This email was sent by Neville to Prabir.
In the email, Neville discusses 7 themes to combat the growing challenges that the Left faces globally, including in India.
1. The Communist vision: Neville says that they need to come up with an alternate vision for society since the communist vision is no longer “easy to project’. He asks how they can face rejection of mass struggles and how to counter the propaganda against communists and communism.
2. New characteristics of the working class: He laments that unions are on the decline, which were considered ‘reservoirs of the communists’. He also asks how they can deal with the “severe fragmentation of the working class” since due to mechanisation, thousands of workers are not collected in a factory space. ‘How do we organize the rural proletariat in the context of a new type of rural crisis that includes severe environmental destruction?”, he asks.
3. Emerging strategic issues in the post-Neo-Liberal era: In this, Neville talks about DMCs (Digital Monopoly Capital) and how the hegemony of Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, along with AI, is reducing the need for human capital, thereby hurting communism. He further writes while capital has increased in the world, international working-class solidarity has decreased. He then equates Erdogan, PM Modi, Trump and Tremer to ask if pro-fascism is rising and how they can strategies to stop it.
4. In this theme, Neville talks about exploring other political instruments since the party form seems to be declining across the world. He also asks how they can attract the masses to join the movement.
5. Neville writes here, “Practical Questions: How do we effectively ally with ‘separatist’ or identity movements? These are the main dignity movements that have a different strategy than us. How to engage them and find commonality in action? How are we doing at mainstreaming gender and ethnicity issues inside-out movements? What is the real strategy of the left in local governments such as Barcelona, Port Elizabeth and Kerala? How do we amplify our political education efforts and network of schools and cadres?”.
6. Interestingly, in this theme, Neville talks about the Left taking lessons from Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. He writes, “What should the rising “massification” of popular religions all around the world teach the left? Hezbollah and, the Muslim Brotherhood have used doctors, medical care and services to serve as central elements of organizing and providing services”. He further asks, “How do we build powerful partisan popular media centres and use social media in our struggles in an era of the end of print and TV along with their business models?“
7. In the last theme about ‘internationalisation’, Neville talks about how they can connect popular movements from across the world to be with explicitly Left ideological forces. He also talks about an international strategy.
From the 7 themes as discussed by Neville Roy Singham with Prabir Pukayastha, it becomes evident that the aim of NewsClick, its founders and the nexus with Neville Roy Singham was to attack at the very heart of Indian Sovereignty and displace democracy in India.
Here is what the 7 themes discussed by Neville reveal:
- The chargesheet explicitly says that the alternative vision mentioned in Theme – 1 of the mail is nothing else but to forcibly replace Indian democracy with a Party-State system like the one that exists in present-day China.
- While talking about declining international working-class solidarity, Neville also talks about bringing PM Modi down by branding him a fascist. This would point towards subversion of the Indian democratic process by someone who is proven to be funded by China and who is funding elements within India to push the Chinese narrative. If Neville Roy Singham is talking about displacing PM Modi as the head of the state, it is evident the Chinese state agenda that he is attempting to seed with elements like Parbir Purkayastha.
- He again talks about attracting the masses to join their movements. Given how he has spoken earlier of Maoist-style movements, it becomes clear that he supports violent movements.
- Neville talks specifically about allying with separatist movements in India. He also talks about allying with identity movements. This clearly points to NewsClick and its entire nexus encouraging terrorism and also, feeding the narrative that Muslims are in danger in India at the behest of China.
- Neville then treads an even more dangerous narrative by asking Prabir Purkayastha and others to take lessons from Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood.
- He further talks about building “powerful partisan popular media” and the use of social media to implement their strategy of disintegrating India.
- Lastly, he talks about aligning the Left with global popular movements. This thread could be seen in how the Black Lives Matter movement for example or the Intifada was connected to Indian Muslims in India.
From the email above, which is being considered the starting point of the conspiracy in the NewsClick case, it becomes evident that the ultimate aim of the left ecosystem is to ensure the end of Democracy in India with an alternate political system mirroring China in its place.