New Delhi: International nonprofit organization Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, and a London-based human rights lawyers group Guernica 37 Chambers approached the European Union on Wednesday to sanction four top-ranking Delhi police officials over their crackdown on news website NewsClick, Scroll reported.
In a significant development, the organizations reportedly made submissions to the European External Action Service, the European Union’s diplomatic service.
They stated that they sought to adopt “sanctions against four officials of the Delhi Police’s counter-terrorism unit, who are implicated in an unprecedented crackdown on journalists in the country”.
The organistations, according to Scroll, made it clear that the top ranking police officers, whose names they did not reveal, ordered raids on the homes of 46 journalists linked to NewsClick in Delhi in October.
Delhi police on October 3 arrested the website’s founder Prabir Purkayastha and human resources head Amit Chakraborty alongside raiding several of its journalists after a case lodged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
The police accused the website of having received money to ‘spread Chinese propaganda’.
However, Reporters Without Borders and Guernica 37 Chambers on Wednesday stated that the journalists who were raided had investigated alleged fraud committed by Adani Group, adding, “whose chairman is considered close to current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’.
Alongside they also said that journalists who reported farmers protests that had taken place between 2020 and 2021 were also targeted.
Further the outfits said that the Delhi Police Special Cell used to ‘intimidate voices’ that are ‘critical of the government’.
The actions against NewsClick began after The New York Times on August 5 accused the website of having received money from American businessman Neville Roy Singham, who was associated with ‘ Chinese government media machine’ to ‘ spread its propaganda’, according to the report.