Delhi High Court upholds remand of NewsClick Editor Prabir Purkayastha, HR head Amit Chakraborty to police custody

The Delhi High Court on Friday upheld the trial court order remanding NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha and the website's humans resources (HR) head Amit Chakraborty to Delhi Police custody for seven days in the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) case against them..Justice Tushar Rao Gedela rejected the petitions filed by Purkayastha and Chakraborty challenging the remand order. "We do not find any merit in the petition, the same is dismissed," the Court said..In a detailed judgment, the Bench said that "it appears as of now" that the grounds of arrest were indeed conveyed to Purkayastha and Chakraborty, "as soon as may be, after the arrest". Therefore, there does not appear to be any procedural infirmity or violation of the provisions of the Section 43B of the UAPA or the Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India, the Court held. As such, the arrests are in accordance with law, the Court underscored. Justice Gedela further said that trial court order is sustainable in law. "In case the argument of the petitioner about non-furnishing of grounds of arrest is taken to be true, then it is inexplicable as to how the petitioner had, on 04.10.2023, even before receiving the copy of the present FIR, gained the knowledge that the present FIR was in the nature of a second FIR registered on the basis of the same allegations and transactions which were leveled against him by the EOW/ECIR in the previous FIR regarding offences under PMLA."The Court added that there is nothing on record to demonstrate that the timelines as averred in the petition are factually correct in nature or even to suggest otherwise. .The Court is yet to hear the plea by the two accused seeking quashing of first information report (FIR) against them..Purkayastha and Chakraborty were arrested following a series of raids that were conducted in the wake of allegations made in a New York Times article that NewsClick was being paid to boost Chinese propaganda.The arrest was made on October 3 after several hours of questioning. They were remanded to seven days police custody early morning on October 4. As per the FIR, the accused illegally received crores of rupees in foreign funds and deployed the same with an intention to disrupt the sovereignty, unity and security of India.The FIR said that secret inputs suggest that substantial foreign funds were illegally funneled into India by both Indian and foreign entities. These funds, amounting to crores of rupees, were received by Newsclick through illegal means over a span of five years.The funds were fraudulently infused by Neville Roy Singham, allegedly an active member of the Communist Party of China's propaganda department, through a complex network of entities, it was alleged.They then moved the High Court challenging their arrest, remand and the FIR lodged against them in a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).Before the High Court, they argued that their arrest and remand were illegal since they were not supplied with grounds of arrest and the same was in violation of the recent Supreme Court judgment in Directorate of Enforcement vs Roop Bansal and Ors (M3M case).They also claimed that not a penny was received from China as alleged by the Delhi Police.The Delhi Police on the other hand claimed that the accused wanted to compromise national security and integrity.They also said that the judgment in M3M case would not apply in the instant case since the same was delivered on the same day the arrest happened, i.e. October 3 and the Delhi Police were not aware about it..Read more about the arguments made by parties here..Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Dayan Krishnan and Siddharth Aggarwal along with Advocates Arshdeep Singh Khurana, Harsh Srivastava, Harshit Mahalwal, Sidak Singh Anand, Manan Khanna, Nikhil Pawar, Rupali Samuel, Sowjhanya Shankar, Shreedhar Kale, Chaitanya and Vibhu Walia appeared for Purkayastha.Advocates Rohit Sharma, Rounak Nayak, Nikhil Purohit and Jatin Lalwani represented Amit Chakraborty.Delhi Police was represented through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, Additional Standing Counsel Amol Sinha as well as Advocates Akhand Pratap Singh, Kshitiz Garg, Ashvini Kumar, Rahul Kochar, Chavi Lazarus, Zoheb Hossain, Vivek Gurnani, Baibhav and Manisha Dubey..[Read Judgement]