Delhi Police raids 'Wire' editors Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu

New Delhi: Following the BJP leader's complaint, police raided the houses of the country's prominent journalists and editors of 'The Wire'-the online news portal- Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and Jahnavi Sen. On Monday evening, the Delhi Police conducted a search at the residences of the trio in New Delhi. An FIR was registered against them last day on charges of fraud, forgery, defamation and criminal conspiracy. Venu told Scroll.in that the police came around 4.40 pm and left at 6 pm. The police said that the investigation is being conducted as part of the Delhi Police Crime Branch's investigation of Amit Malviya's complaint. They have taken my iPhone and iPad for cloning, he said.

He confirmed that Varadarajan's house was also raided. The Wire had published that Amit Malviya is getting special treatment on Metta-owned social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and if Malviya wishes, any content on them will be banned without verification.

Later, the portal retracted the news and expressed regret when Meta came to the fore, saying that the evidence provided by the portal was fabricated. Following this, BJP leader Malvya filed a complaint. 'The Wire' informed that a member of their investigation team had deceived them in the incident. Then it filed a police complaint against the former consultant. The complaint was made through e-mail on Saturday against Devesh Kumar, a former consultant of the portal.

The Wire had issued a statement the previous day indicating the error that had happened to them. Wire explained that journalists rely on various sources for news and thus try their best to ensure the credibility of the news they receive. It said in a statement that technology-based evidence is very complex. Therefore, fraud committed to endanger a media organization may not be detected by ordinary vigilance. This is what happened to them, and it added that the news source misled them.