Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Oct 25: Founder and Editor-in-chief of Newsclick Prabir Purkayastha and head of HR Amit Chakravarty were sent into Delhi Police custody until November 2 by the Patiala House Court of Delhi on Wednesday.
Additional Sessions Judge Hardeep Kaur approved the Delhi Police’s plea for an additional nine days of custody for Prabir Prukayastha and Amit Chakravarty.
Today, Purkayastha and Chakravarty were brought before the court following the conclusion of their judicial custody term. The same court had already given both individuals 10 and 5 days of judicial custody.
The Delhi Police said that in order to confront them with certain protected witnesses, as well as certain equipment that were inspected and data retrieved from, they had to be questioned while in custody.
Arshdeep Singh Khurana, the lawyer for Purkayastha, argued against the Delhi Police’s plea for custodial remand, saying that the police had to at least provide to the court what new details they have discovered.
“You have to unearth conspiracy, what were you doing for 25 days. FIR is from August. They have been in Judicial Custody from the 10th of this month. Not even one day they examined them during Judicial Custody. If they want to confront him with retrieved data that can happen in Judicial Custody, why is police custody needed?” the lawyer asked.
In a case brought under the anti-terror law UAPA, the two were recently arrested on charges that the news portal NewsClick had received large sums of money for spreading propaganda favouring China.
The news portal allegedly received significant funding from China in order to “disrupt the sovereignty of India” and incite discontent with the nation, according to the FIR.
The allegation further stated that Purkayastha was involved in a conspiracy with the People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS) to disrupt the electoral proceedings during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
