Delhi Police visit Sitaram Yechury’s residence to question staffer’s son in NewsClick case

Yechury has denied that the searches were not against him or the CPI(M) but was related to the son of one of his staffers

New Delhi: A team of Delhi Police’s Special Cell visited the residence of CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday to question his staffer Sri Narayan’s son who works for NewsClick, the media outlet accused of receiving funds from China.

According to sources, the Special Cell officers seized Sunmit Kumar’s mobile, laptop, and hard drive.

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Yechury has denied that the searches were not against him or the CPI(M) but was related to the son of one of his staffers. On Tuesday morning, the sleuths of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell carried out searches at over 30 locations in the national capital, including the premises of the NewsClick as well as the residences of its journalists, in the wake of the accusation.

However, no arrests have been made so far. During the raid, the Special Cell officers seized electronic evidence, laptops, mobile phones, pen drives and took data dumps of hard disks from the NewsClick office and the journalists associated with the organisation including Bhasha Singh, Abhisar Sharma and Sanjay Rajoura among others.

The residences of NewsClick writers Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Urmilesh were also searched.

In response to the searches, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor slammed the Centre and in a post on X, he said: “Shocked to learn of the raids on 30 journalists in Delhi and arrests of several of them. These are not the actions of a ‘mother of democracy’ but of an insecure and autocratic state.” “Why does a government as strong and authoritarian as this one is, feel threatened by a news website? And that too, one that is not even ranked very high in reach or readership? Intolerance is unworthy of everything that India represents. The government has disgraced itself and our democracy today.”