In a police complaint against its former consultant Devesh Kumar, news portal The Wire has alleged that he had “malintent” towards the organisation and had supplied “fabricated documents and materials” for their series of stories, later retracted, which claimed that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT Cell head Amit Malviya had used special privileges provided to him by tech giant Meta to take down over 700 social media posts.
Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said the complaint was received on Saturday and its contents are being probed. No FIR has been lodged yet.
An FIR was lodged against the news portal on the complaint by Mr. Malviya on Saturday, naming founding editors Siddharth Varadarajan, M.K. Venu and Sidharth Bhatia, as well as Deputy Editor and Executive News Producer Jahnavi Sen, under IPC Sections related to cheating and forgery, claiming that they “maligned” and “tarnished” Mr. Malviya’s reputation through “fabricated stories”.
As per the complaint by The Wire, accessed by The Hindu, the news portal said it was clear that Mr. Kumar had “malintent towards The Wire and its editors and staff and has fabricated and supplied documents, emails and other materials such as videos with a view to damaging The Wire and its reputation”. It added: “He has done so either on his own or at the behest of other unknown persons.”
The complaint stated that Mr. Kumar was employed as a consultant by The Wire on a monthly basis from April 2021 to July 2022.
