On Monday, Delhi Police raided the residences of The Wire co-founders Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu, and staffer Jahnavi Sen, based on the merits of an FIR filed by BJP’s Amit Malviya for the publication’s false reports, earlier this year.
The police had lodged an FIR against the portal, its founder and editors in connection with its unsubstantiated allegations that BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya had special privileges given by Meta (Parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), to take down over 700 social media posts, based on his or his party’s whims and personal views.
As always, the Left Liberal media is trying to project The Wire’s co founders, Siddharth Varadarajan and M.K. Venu as innocent journalist victims and blame the BJP for their recent arrests, while ignoring the serious offences of fraud and forgery registered against them.
Predictably, the left-liberal ecosystem took to the internet, claiming political vengeance against a publication, known for its consistently rabid and often unsubstantiated or undue criticism of the current BJP dispensation.
The Left ecosystem is desperately trying to paint one of their own, the Left “liberal” news portal, The Wire, as innocent victims of Government repression, even in the face of evidence showing their decisions and actions to be against journalistic values by deliverately withholding the truth from the “Meta” stories and the controversial “Tek Fog” report earlier this year.
The reasons behind Delhi Police’s raids against founders, Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and staffer, Jahnavi Sen were not for personal defamation by Mr. Amit Malviya, as being potrayed by many leftist ‘intellectuals’ but for consistently indulging in forgery, cheating, fraud, fabrication, and criminal conspiracy.
There is no civil defamation case of a personal nature, against The Wire, Varadarajan, and others involved in the case. They now face a criminal case for forgery, fabrication, and hatching a criminal conspiracy.
The Left lobby’s protest against a justifiable inquiry into the now confirmed falsfication of facts indulged in, by The Wire and Siddharth Varadarajan, are childish and silly.
Their insistence that a staffer, Devesh Kumar had misled them in their report of the Meta piece, is not convincing enough in light of information, later discovered.
It is unbelievable and absurd that founders and chief editors of a news site, place the entire burden of fake news or deliberately falsified news on a staffer, even after several indications that the information may be faulty.
The portal chose to keep the lies floating around instead of taking the report down, for further audit. Even if one were to presume that Siddharth Varadarajan and Jahnavi Sen were misled by Devesh Kumar for their original story, the subsequent forgery, fabrications and strident defence of their stance, demonstrate the confidence and conviction of Varadarajan and other reporters in their original story with the controversial allegations. A day after the police lodged an FIR against the news portal, The Wire indulged in a shameful act against its own researcher-writer. They’ve thrown their own staffer under the bus by filing a case against him for allegedly “misleading” them with false information.
Earlier this year, in yet another similar instance of spreading false information and misleading readers, The Wire had published an article claiming that the application Tek Fog used ShareChat, an Indian social media and networking site, to share hate speech.
The article published in January claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party used an app called ‘Tek Fog’ to artificially inflate the party’s popularity, manipulate public perception and harass BJP critics.
On October 18, ShareChat, implicated in The Wire’s unsubstantiated news, released a statement against The Wire and asked them to take down an article by Devesh Kumar as well as other related reports.
This came just days after Meta and The Wire were engaged in a controversy after The Wire, in an article, alleged that Instagram posts were deleted or denied reviews, whenever BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya reported any.
The Wire and Siddharth Varadarajan had deliberately ignored the statement issued by Meta that unequivocally denounced the allegations levelled by The Wire that Amit Malviya has powers that enables him to remove Instagram posts that are not to his liking. The story was vigorously rebutted on social media too, where users pointed out loopholes in The Wire’s report.
However, Varadarajan and the company remained obstinate, refused to take down the alleged fake-news report and conduct an internal investigation into the reporting. Instead, they indulged in an outrageous action unbefitting of journalistic ethics! They came up with a fabricated email by Meta executive Mr. Andy Stone, to make a case for the authenticity of their story. Mr. Stone termed the email as fabricated and alerted The Wire that the email might be fabricated but Varadarajan persisted with the claim that BJP’s Amit Malviya, enjoys privilege on Meta’s Instagram app, having the capability of removing critical posts against the BJP, a serious allegation denied by Meta, the company that owns the social media platform.
Even after the warning of falsified information by a high ranking executive of Meta, The Wire and Varadarajan opted to keep the news alive, a clear indication of malicious intent against the BJP and Mr. Malviya. Shockingly, they took it a step further in their journey of lies – they tried verifying a fake Andy Stone email with fake DKIM, with forged verification of two “external experts”.
It was only after the independent researchers listed as the “external experts” by The Wire, categorically refuted having done any such alleged verification, that The Wire finally buckled down under its own heap of dark lies, half heartedly apologised after being caught red handed and pulled down their invented, fake Meta stories.
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) goes beyond simply validating that the sending server is authorized to send mail for the domain, it also validates that mail content has not changed since being sent by the server.
Besides all these inconsistencies, Varadarajan had also claimed The Wire’s “internal computers” had faulty data stamp issues due to “Tails OS”. Tails Operating System is used by journalists, activists and others who desire to keep their digital activity safe and anonymous. It comes with encryption features.
At one point during the course of the Meta vs The Wire saga, Siddharth Varadarajan also claimed to have met the Meta sources himself, when social media users and domain experts raised questions about The Wire’s story.
The Wire retracted its Meta story after Amit Malviya moved to file a complaint against the publication. In his complaint addressed to the special commissioner of police (crime) Delhi, Amit Malviya said, “I am filing the present complaint against The Wire – an online news portal, Mr Siddharth Varadarajan Founding Editor of The Wire, Mr Sidharth Bhatia Founding Editor of The Wire, Mr MK Venu Founding Editor of The Wire, Ms Jahnavi Sen -the Deputy Editor and Executive News Producer at The Wire, Foundation for Independent Journalism the company that owns and publishes The Wire and other unknown persons. I am filing the present complaint for the offences of cheating, forgery for the purpose of cheating, forgery for the purpose of harming the reputation, using as genuine a forged document or electronic record, and defamation amongst other provisions of IPC.”
Amit Malviya added, “I say that this is not the first time that the Accused has published fake news. Recently, the Accused published a story on Tek Fog about a ‘superhuman app’ used by the BJP for SM interception. The said story was used by various national and international media to downgrade India and the thriving democracy of our country. However, subsequently, the Tek Fog story was taken down by The Wire as it was found to be false and fabricated, just as in the present case.”
Netizens are questioning the clear bias of the Left-Liberal lobby for defending The Wire’s criminal actions even in the presence of evidence mounting against the News site. Many readers have expressed surprise over the same Left leaning lobby’s muted, surprisingly low key response, to a politically motivated “freedom of expression” incident just a few months ago, during the previous Congress-NCP-Sena led Maharashtra regime, in which a young Marathi actress and ordinary citizen was hounded, harassed, assaulted and even imprisoned rather quickly by the former Left dominated coalition government, for expressing her thoughts on Facebook and merely mentioning the name “Pawar”.
29 yr old actor Ketaki Chitale, who was arrested in May, for allegedly sharing an objectionable post about Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, claimed she was put in jail for merely “copy-pasting a post from Facebook” and uploading it on her profile.
Her Facebook post in which certain phrases and words were picked out for comment and complained about, by an NCP activist, resulted in a ridiculously disproportionate number of 22 FIRs filed against her, under the former government in Maharashtra, in what appears to be an extreme case of political
over-reach and abuse of power. She was charged under sections relating to public mischief, defamation, and promoting enmity between different groups.
She was arrested on May 14 and was granted bail on June 24. “I came out with a smile because I was relieved. But I am out on bail. The battle is still going on,” Chitale said, adding that she is not free yet. She stated she has only received bail in only one of the 22 FIRs registered against her, in various districts of Maharashtra.
The young woman describes her horror and ordeal: “The next thing I know was that the police were at my door, taking me away, arresting me… during that whole ordeal there was a mob of 20-25 people, they molested me, attacked me, hit me, threw toxic colour at me under the guise of ink, eggs were being thrown. Not only at me, but they also assaulted the police.”
“Whatever I posted was according to the freedom of speech and expression. I cannot help that people misinterpreted it in a certain way… I was behind bars for no rhyme or reason. Pawar is not a religion,” Ketaki Chitale has stated.
In another incident in May 2021, 23-year-old pharmacy student Nikhil Bhamre was also arrested by Nashik police for allegedly making an objectionable comment on Twitter against Mr Pawar, whose NCP party was a part of the then coalition government in Maharashtra which included the Congress and a faction of the Shiv Sena.
India’s Left lobby seems to have gone on “vacation” and restricted their comments if any, over the unjustified arrests of young people for merely expressing their views, because these young people did not subscribe to their Leftist views. The Left did not go weeping to the International Media or indulge in wide spread protests over “constitional rights” of liberty and freedom of speech ! So much for the Left-Liberal claim to righteousness, fairness and justice! The Left-Liberal lobby’s clearly biased coverage of the two incidents, has rightly been called out by netizens!
It would be apt to expand DIGIPUB as DIshonest GIbberish PUBlications given its blatant attempt to whitewash The Wire which has been accused of fraud and forgery.
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