Our editors and staffers fully cooperated: The Wire’s statement after Delhi cops search homes of founders

Our editors and staffers fully cooperated: The Wire’s statement after Delhi cops search homes of founders

Last Updated Oct - 31 - 2022, 10:04 PM | Source : Agency

The homes of the founding editors of news website The Wire, Siddharth Vardarajan and MK Venu, were searched on Monday by the crime branch of the Delhi Police. V

New Delhi: The Wire, a news portal, issued a statement on Monday, stating that their editors and staffers "fully cooperated with the Delhi cops and gave over the devices sought." The crime branch unit of Delhi Police searched the office and the residences of the owners of The Wire. The homes of the founding editors of news website The Wire, Siddharth Vardarajan and MK Venu, were searched on Monday by the crime branch of the Delhi Police. Various electronic devices were also seized. No arrests were made by the Delhi Police.

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"All four cooperated and gave over the devices sought. We also placed on record our demand for the hash value of the phones, computers, and iPads seized and for cloned copies of the devices seized to be kept at a neutral place. The hash value is a unique numerical value used to ensure the integrity of a device and its data," the statement read.

"In spite of this cooperation, The Wire’s office at Bhagat Singh Market in Delhi was also searched and one of our lawyers physically pushed out by the officers at that site," The Wire further added.

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This came two days after BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya lodged a complaint against The Wire and the editors for “tarnishing his reputation” with their now-retracted report that he used his special privileges at tech giant Meta to take down over 700 social media posts.

The Delhi Police had booked Vardarajan and the others under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery with the purpose of cheating), 469 (forgery for harming reputation), 471 (using forged document), 500 (defamation), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention).

For unversed, The Wire published a report, on October 6, 2022, claiming that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, had removed an Instagram post within a few minutes of it being uploaded by a private account, namely “Cringearchivist”. The report claimed that Amit Malviya, who is the IT cell chief of the BJP, had certain privileges to take down posts from Meta-owned Instagram.

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The reports soon sparked a row, with questions being raised over the report's authenticity. Questions are also being raised over the credibility of the sources cited by The Wire.

The news website initially stood by its report, with Siddharth Varadarajan stating that the "stories came from multiple Meta sources - whom we know, have met and verified".

On October 11, 2022, Meta’s Communication Head, Andy Stone, categorically denied the claims in the report and said that the documents were "fabricated".

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The Wire was forced to retract the stories and issue an apology. “To have rushed to publish a story we believed was reliable without having the associated technical evidence vetted independently is a failure of which we cannot permit repetition," it stated.

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