NewsClick Verdict a Moment of Vindication, But Wounds of Persecution Run Deep: CITU

New Delhi: The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has welcomed the Delhi High Court's ruling quashing all cases against news portal NewsClick and its founder-editor Prabir Purkayastha, but warned that the damage inflicted by years of state-sponsored persecution could not be undone by a court verdict alone.

Justice Neena Bansal Krishna quashed both the FIR registered by the Economic Offences Wing and the Enforcement Directorate's case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against NewsClick, declaring the entire proceedings a "gross abuse of the process of law" and categorically ruling that the Foreign Direct Investment received by the company violated no law.

In a statement, CITU recalled the scale of the crackdown that followed. In October 2023, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested Purkayastha and another NewsClick staffer under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) on allegations that the portal had received funds to spread pro-Chinese propaganda. Raids were conducted simultaneously at 88 locations across Delhi and seven other states. Around 300 electronic devices were seized from NewsClick offices and the homes of journalists. Over 46 individuals — including nine female journalists — were interrogated. "An entire newsroom was terrorised. Careers were disrupted. Voices were silenced," the statement said.

The original FIR, registered in August 2020 on a complaint forwarded by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, had alleged that NewsClick received Rs 9.59 crore in FDI through an allegedly overvalued share transaction designed to circumvent FDI restrictions. The court has now held that this entire edifice of accusation had no legal foundation — rendering years of harassment, raids, arrests, and surveillance, in CITU's words, as nothing but a calculated exercise in producing a chilling effect.

CITU described the case as part of a systematic pattern of assault on independent and alternative media under the current dispensation. Outlets covering workers' struggles, farmers' agitations, communal violence, and corporate malfeasance had been targeted through tax raids, FDI investigations, licence cancellations, and UAPA, it said, while corporate-owned media dependent on government advertising continued to amplify the ruling establishment's narrative undisturbed.

The trade union body expressed full solidarity with Purkayastha, NewsClick's journalists and workers, and all those subjected to what it termed a prolonged witch-hunt. It cautioned that the laws enabling the persecution — UAPA applied to journalists and PMLA wielded as a tool of political pressure — remained on the statute books and would be used again, and demanded their repeal along with the full restoration of all rights and resources to NewsClick and those affected.

"Truth cannot be jailed. Justice, however delayed, must be celebrated — and the fight for a free, independent media must go on," CITU said.