New Delhi: Online news portal The Wire lodged a complaint with the Delhi Police against its former employee, researcher Devesh Kumar who worked on their stories against Meta, the social media giant that owns Facebook and Instagram. The complaint was sent via mail to the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Saturday against Kumar alleging fabrication and forgery by Kumar in the portal’s recent Meta stories.
Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Singh Yadav confirmed to ThePrint that they have received a complaint. An FIR is yet to be lodged in the matter. “We are looking into the matter,” Yadav said.
Speaking to ThePrint Sunday, The Wire founder, Siddharth Varadarajan said, “We are yet to get a receipt of the complaint from the Delhi Police. The complaint was filed via mail against Devesh Kumar for fabrication and forgery”.
On Saturday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT cell head Amit Malviya lodged an FIR against the news portal, its founder and editors — Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, M.K. Venu, Jahnavi Sen — in connection to their stories, which the news portal retracted on October 23 following backlash. The retracted stories mentioned how Malviya had special privileges at Meta.
The FIR against The Wire journalists has been filed under Indian Penal Code 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).
“It is clear that The Wire and some unknown persons entered into a criminal conspiracy with intent to malign and tarnish my reputation, deliberately inserted my name into a story, and fabricated evidence to implicate me. I am left with no option other than to seek legal remedies,” Malviya said in a statement Friday.
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Earlier this month, The Wire, in their reports, had claimed that Meta had granted Malviya through its XCheck programme to take down over 700 social media posts that he deemed were critical of the BJP. The stories cited source based Meta documents which were denied by the social media giant.
On Thursday, the news portal in a statement said that they have retracted their Meta stories after conducting an internal review of the technical source material used, with the help of external experts.
“That process of review is still under way, but one clear editorial learning which can already be stated with certainty is that complex technical evidence – whether brought by someone who is part of the newsroom or a freelancer – and all verification processes that involve technical skill, must be cross-checked by independent and reputed experts in the field. Had we done this before publication rather than after the fact, this would have ensured that the deception to which we were subjected by a member of our Meta investigation team was spotted in time,” the statement said.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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Source: The Print
