India: Independent media outlet and journalists targeted

The Observatory has been informed about the coordinated raids conducted on the office of the news website The Wire in New Delhi, and the residences of the media outlet’s founding editors Messrs Siddharth Vardarajan, M.K. Venu, and Sidharth Bhatia, deputy editor Ms Jahnavi Sen, and staff member Mr Mithun Kidambi in New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as about the seizure of their electronic devices. The Wire is an independent online media outlet established in 2015 and since then has published numerous pieces of investigative journalism. Several news stories published by The Wire have been critical of the policies and actions of the central and state governments in India.

On the evening of October 31, 2022, a large contingent of Delhi Police Crime Branch officers conducted coordinated raids at The Wire’s office in New Delhi as well as at the residences of Messrs Vardarajan, Venu, and Ms Sen in New Delhi, and Mr Bhatia in Mumbai. The Wire’s lawyer was manhandled and denied access to The Wire’s office while the raids were being conducted. On November 1, 2022, at around 2:30 in the morning, raids were conducted at the residence of Mr Kidambi in Mumbai. The police did not present any search warrant in any of the raids.

The police seized 16 electronic devices from the office, and phones, laptops and tablets from the above-mentioned individuals. All of them were asked by the police officers to provide them with the passwords of their personal and professional email accounts, and to remove the passcodes of all their devices. The police refused to provide The Wire staff members with the hash value of the seized phones, computers and tablets. The hash value is a numeric value of an electronic device that works as a digital “fingerprint” and is a critical tool to assess potential tampering after seizure of a device.

These searches and seizures followed a First Information Report (FIR) registered by the Delhi police on alleged charges of “cheating”, “forgery”, “defamation”, and “criminal conspiracy”. The basis of this FIR is a complaint filed on October 27, 2022, by Mr. Amit Malviya, head of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s National Information and Technology Department, against The Wire in relation to a series of articles published by the media outlet in early October 2022. The articles claimed that the multinational technology conglomerate Meta had granted Mr. Malviya the ability to remove any Instagram posts without any due process. On October 23, 2022, The Wire had retracted all the articles, as an internal review revealed that the researcher who wrote them had used falsified documents in the story. In another statement, The Wire publicly apologized to its readers and announced its decision to conduct an internal review of its recent coverage of Meta. On October 29, 2022, The Wire had also filed a complaint against the researcher with the Delhi Police. Yet, Mr. Malviya filed the complaint and the Delhi police pursued the raids and seizures.

The Observatory condemns the harassment against The Wire, its editors, and staff members, which seems unnecessary and disproportionate, considering The Wire’s public retraction, announcement of subsequent internal review, and submission of a police complaint against its researcher. The Observatory believes this action is deliberately used as a pretext to intimidate and ultimately silence The Wire’s independent reporting and legitimate criticism, especially of the BJP.

The Observatory expresses its utmost concern over the rampant deterioration of the right to freedom of expression, including media freedom, in India, which ranks 150th out of 180 countries surveyed in Reporters Without Borders (RSF)’s 2022 World Press Index. Several journalists and online critics, including Mohammad Zubair and Siddique Kappan, have been subjected to arbitrary detention and judicial harassment on trumped-up charges in retaliation to their online and offline criticism of the ruling party. Many journalists, including Siddharth Varadarajan and M.K. Venu, have been subjected to online surveillance, including through the use of the spyware Pegasus, as reported by The Wire and international media in July 2021.

The Observatory urges the Indian authorities to put an immediate end to all acts of harassment, including at the judicial level, against The Wire, its editors, and staff members, and all independent journalists in India, and to ensure the right to freedom of expression is protected, respected and promoted in the country, in line with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which India is a state party.