India police search journalists’ homes and offices in the country’s latest raids on media

Описание: (3 Oct 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4456409

ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Delhi - 3 October 2023
1. Lawyers representing journalists picked up by police speaking to officers outside station, requesting legal authorization letters for their clients
HEADLINE: INDIAN POLICE RAID MEDIA OFFICE, JOURNALISTS' HOMES
ANNOTATION: Authorities in India raided the offices of a news website that's under investigation for allegedly receiving funds from China.
2. Various of security personnel walking near police station
ANNOTATION: It's the latest in a string of news organizations being investigated by the Modi government for alleged financial improprieties.
ANNOTATION: The homes of several of its journalists were also raided, in what critics describe as an attack on one of the few remaining independent news outlets.
3. STILL of security officers carrying boxes of material confiscated after a raid at the office of NewsClick
ANNOTATION: Boxes of material were confiscated from the office of NewsClick, a news outlet that's been known to willingly criticize Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
4. STILL of Founder and Editor-in-Chief of NewsClick Prabir Purkayastha being brought to Delhi Police Special Cell
ANNOTATION: Two people, including NewClick's founder and editor-in-chief, were detained.
5. SOUNDBITE (Hindi) Amarjeet Singh, Human Rights Law Network:
“The police are not listening to us. No application is being accepted, our clients are not being allowed to sign their legal authorization letters. This is an act of terror. This is an effort to silence people who question the government in any form.”
6. Various of police personnel
ANNOTATION: The Press Club of India said it was “deeply concerned about the multiple raids" and "demands the government to come out with details.”
STORYLINE:
Indian police raided the offices of a news website that's under investigation for allegedly receiving funds from China, as well as the homes of several of its journalists, in what critics described as an attack on one of India's few remaining independent news outlets.

The Press Trust of India news agency cited unidentified officials as saying that investigators took data from laptops and mobile phones of journalists, and that two journalists were detained.

Lawyers urged police to allow their clients to sign Legal Authorization Letters, allowing them to begin with the legal process.

“The police are not listening to us. No application is being accepted, our clients are not being allowed to sign their legal authorization letters. This is an act of terror. This is an effort to silence people who question the government in any form,” said Amarjeet Singh, from the Human Rights Law Network.

The raids came months after Indian authorities searched the BBC’s New Delhi and Mumbai offices over accusations of tax evasion in February.

NewsClick, founded in 2009, is known as a rare Indian news outlet that is willing to criticize Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A number of other news organizations have been investigated for financial impropriety under Modi's Hindu nationalist government, as international monitors warn that press freedom is eroding in India.

Indian authorities registered a case against the site and its journalists on August 17, weeks after a New York Times report alleged that the website had received funds from an American millionaire who, the Times wrote, has funded the spread of “Chinese propaganda.”

NewsClick has denied the charges.


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