The Wire files complaint against its researcher over Twitter row
The complaint comes days after the website retracted a series of stories linked to the social media company Meta.
News website The Wire accused one of its former staffers of using fake documents as evidence of a story in order to damage its reputation, police officials said on Sunday, adding that they were looking into the matter before a decision on whether to file an FIR (first information report).
The complaint comes days after the website retracted a series of stories linked to the social media company Meta.
In the report that first made the allegation on October 10, The Wire said Meta gave special privileges to Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) IT cell head Amit Malviya to report any user’s Instagram posts for immediate removal. The report, among those retracted, was based on fraudulent documents sent by a former consultant.
“The complaint has been received against one Devesh Kumar in connection with all the Meta stories that were published by the platform this month and we are examining it,” a Crime Branch officer said, adding that the complaint was sent over email.
The Wire and Kumar did not offer a comment when reached by HT.
On Saturday, the police filed an FIR against The Wire over a separate complaint by Malviya, invoking sections of forgery and criminal conspiracy. The FIR names the news website’s founder Siddharth Varadarajan, other founder editors Sidharth Bhatia and MK Venu, and executive news producer Jahnavi Sen.
The new complaint by the website names Devesh Kumar for “fabrication and forgery of documents”. Kumar, the complaint said, sent documents purported to be mails from a source at Meta and external experts who later denied having been contacted.
Regarding the first mail that Kumar said, the complaint alleged: “Believing the said email ... document Devesh Kumar sent us to be correct, The Wire published a story based on this material on October 10”.
The story triggered backlash from Meta as well as independent experts who said the claims did not add up, forcing the website to publish more evidence to back up its claim but those too, the complaint alleged, were based on documents Kumar forged.
The subsequent documents included purported endorsements by independent technical experts, who later issued separate clarifications denying they had provided any such comment. It was at this point that The Wire launched a review, it said in its complaint.
“Our review – done with the help of reputed outside experts – of the documents and material Devesh Kumar had provided clearly established that he had supplied us fabricated material – including the documents and emails and videos from Instagram and Meta...”
“It is clear that Kumar has malintent towards The Wire and its editors and staff and has fabricated and supplied documents, emails and other material such as videos with a view to damaging The Wire and its reputation,” it said, adding that they believed “he has done so either on his own or at the behest of other unknown persons”.
