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This story is from October 30, 2022

FIR against Wire for retracted reports on BJP IT cell head

FIR against Wire for retracted reports on BJP IT cell head
NEW DELHI: Delhi Police’s crime branch has filed an FIR against editors of the online portal, The Wire, for their now retracted stories accusing BJP’s IT cell head, Amit Malviya, of being on an alleged ‘X-check’ list of Meta (the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) through which he could get any social media post removed. In his complaint, Malviya has also mentioned another ‘retracted report’ allegedly published by The Wire accusing BJP of using a programme named Tek Fog, a ‘superhuman app’, for social media interception.
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The FIR has been filed against Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, MK Venu and Jahnavi Sen. According to senior police officials, the case has been registered under IPC sections of cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy, forgery for the purpose of harming reputation, using as genuine a forged document or electronic record and defamation.
In his complaint addressed to the special commissioner of police, Malviya mentions a ‘defamatory report’ by The Wire dated October 10 which was titled, “If BJP’s Amit Malviya Reports Your Post, Instagram Will Take it Down — NoQuestions Asked”.
According to the complaint, a series of forged and fabricated documents were allegedly created and published by the accused following these stories “in order to defame and cause harm to the reputation of myself and BJP”.
“The Wire published a public apology to its readers stating that they have retracted the stories about the ‘X-check’ list and Meta. However, the accused persons have refrained from issuing an apology to me. On October 28, The Wire on its twitter handle admitted that they had been running a false and fabricated story,” the complaint alleges.
In a statement, The Wire said, “In the life of any publication, an occasion may come when it is misinformed. The moral test is whether the publication persists or speaks the truth. We chose the latter when we realised we had been given fraudulent information. ”
Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, told TOI that the portal on Saturday filed a complaint with the Delhi Police against Devesh Kumar, its former consultant who had allegedly supplied fabricated material on Meta and Instagram “with intent to harm the Wire and its employees and damage its reputation”.
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