Beyond due process

Invoking UAPA against a news outfit is overreaction

The invocation of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against NewsClick executives and the manner in which the day-long raids were conducted epitomise all the public misgivings about the recently passed Digital Personal Data Protection Act and the planned reforms of the criminal procedure laws, currently under parliamentary committee scrutiny. By seizing office documents, laptops, and mobile phones of journalists associated with the platform and detaining the founder and editor-in-chief, Prabir Purkayastha, and the HR head, Amit Chakraborty, without presenting either with a copy of the First Information Report (FIR), the law enforcement apparatus has underlined the state’s approach to independent media.

It is nobody’s case that NewsClick should not be investigated if it has violated investment or other laws. The question is whether the state has followed due process in doing so. In fact, some of the reported charges are not new. The news website’s promoters have been facing enquiries from the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing and an Enforcement Directorate (ED) case on sources of funds from overseas investors and money laundering since 2020. Among the allegations were overvaluation of shares sold to foreign funds to circumvent the foreign direct investment cap of 26 per cent on media and diversion of funds. Nor is this the first time that NewsClick has been investigated for accepting funds from entities connected to China. The ED had searched NewsClick premises as early as February 2021 for receiving funds from US entities with China links. The UAPA action followed a New York Times article in August this year, naming the website as one of the entities receiving funds from an Indian-origin US millionaire who is accused of financing Chinese propaganda networks. It is notable, however, that the Delhi High Court intervened several times between June 2021 and August 2023 to protect Mr Purkayastha and associates from coercive action. In August, the ED and Delhi Police sought a vacation of Mr Purkayastha’s interim protection from arrest. These hearings were scheduled from October 9 to 11. The arrests and interrogations under the UAPA, in which bail conditions are stringent, have disrupted the course of due process and appear to be an extreme response when two of the Centre’s premier enforcement agencies were already on the job. It is unclear what terrorist activity the news website and its executives have indulged in.

Doubts about the arm’s length nature of this week’s action have arisen on account of the nature of the interrogations by the Delhi Police. Journalists associated with the website have been asked whether they attended and reported on rallies against the Citizenship Amendment Act, Delhi riots, and the farmers’ protests. These are strange questions if only because covering such major events would have been routine for any press reporter in Delhi. Equally, at no time has either movement been linked to China’s “foreign hand”. These latest actions make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the state is seeking to stifle critics with the full might of its coercive laws.