NewsClick: Despite Terror Financing 'Evidence', Why Hasn't India Sought US, FATF Help?; Amid Press Repression, Poor Protection for Sportspersons, India Readies Olympics Bid
Roys cleared of insider trading, India missing from trans-Himalayam forum, Nepal swiftly douses communal violence, bonded labour in your coffee, after IIT Bombay, IIT Hyderabad launches shuddh dining
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
October 6, 2023
Pratik Kanjilal
The Delhi High Court deferred till October 9 further consideration of NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha’s writ challenging his arrest by the Delhi Police. At the hearing today, Purkayastha’s counsel, Kapil Sibal, pointed to numerous infirmities in the remand order and to the fact that the financial allegations which form the basis of the terrorism FIR have already been found wanting in the High Court. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the police, could not counter on specifics and merely pleaded that the case he heard on the next working day, i.e. Monday. The HC bench did not agree with Sibal’s suggestion that Purkayastha and his co-accused, Amit Chakravarty, be released on interim bail till then. "The allegations don't seem to be of such a nature that you (the accused) can be released immediately," the judge said.
Now that it is out, we know why the Delhi Police opposed NewsClick founder and editor Prabir Purkayastha’s plea to be provided with a copy of the FIR against him. The FIR is like Swiss cheese, making serious accusations against Purkayastha and others without evidence. Among its assertions are that Chinese funding was used to publish “paid news” criticising Indian domestic policy, that Purkayastha and historian Dilip Simeon were part of a conspiracy to sabotage the 2019 general election, and that Purkayastha and Neville Roy Singham tried to “peddle a narrative both globally and domestically that Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh are disputed territories” by exchanging emails on maps. It also describes as a “key person” one Gautam Bhatia who created a legal network for the wider conspiracy. A legal scholar par excellence, Bhatia has also authored two science fiction books – and many in the legal fraternity feel that the FIR belongs in that category.
At an anti-terror conference organised by the National Investigation Agency, Home Minister Amit Shah said that the body should oversee a uniform national anti-terrorism structure, for better coordination between national and state agencies. He also said that the NIA, anti-terrorism squads, and special task forces should not be restricted to investigation, but allowed to think of overarching anti-terrorism strategies. He also recommended the use of AI and said that left-wing extremism would be extinct in two years.
An Army major in Rajouri fired at colleagues without provocation during shooting practice, took shelter in the camp armoury and lobbed grenades at superiors urging him to surrender. The standoff lasted for eight hours and a nearby village was evacuated. Three officers were injured including the camp’s second in command, whose condition is critical.
Amidst the India-Canada row over the killing of Nijjar, the local police in the Toronto suburb of Brampton have arrested eight Canadian Sikh youths aged 19-26 for firearms offences, indicating that the country is willing to crack down on gun crime. The youths are not necessarily pro-Khalistan, and were reported by local gurdwaras.
At an international forum on trans-Himalayan regional cooperation in a Tibetan town 160 km from the Arunachal border, new Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged nations with Himalayan territory to cooperate on environmental issues plaguing the Third Pole and respect “territorial integrity”. India was absent, despite its long Himalayan border, as it was in earlier editions of the event in 2018 and 2019. It is not known if it was invited, says South China Morning Post.
The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) has quashed an insider trading order by capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) against Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, co-founders of NDTV, stating that the information scrutinised by SEBI was not price-sensitive, and the Roys were not insiders. The order, issued by SEBI in November 2020, accused them of insider trading and barred them from accessing the capital markets for two years. It had directed them to surrender the amount wrongfully gained – over Rs 16.97 crore – along with 6% interest per annum.
The BBC reports on the finding of a Harappan burial complex in Kutch, a 40 acre site with at least 500 graves, of which 400 have been excavated. It features simple grave goods, unlike the practice in most other civilisations in the Old World, but the reason for building this unique necropolis is unknown.
Indian Railways may have to rely on wheels imported from China as domestic supplies from SAIL and the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited have fallen short of growing requirements.
“During the ruling Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester this week, two of the UK’s highest-ranking officials highlighted their Indian heritage in efforts to rally the party faithful,” reports Bloomberg. “Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared that ‘I stand before you today as the first non-white leader in our country’s history,’ and his home secretary, Suella Braverman, acknowledged the ‘wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe.’”
The Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party of separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah has been declared as an “unlawful association” under the UAPA. The ban is effective for five years.
India may announce its bid to host the 2036 Summer Olympic Games in Gujarat at the 140th annual session of the International Olympic Committee in Mumbai on October 15-17. In the way of a successful bid is a worsening human rights record, the ongoing repression of the press and inadequate protections for sportspersons, as the wrestlers’ protests had highlighted, says Human Rights Watch. Newslaundry reports that without camps or amenities, wrestlers had to fend for themselves ahead of the Asian Games. Ahmedabad’s municipal corporation also reportedly plans to demolish a heritage stadium to make way for an Olympic one.
The authorities in Nepal have moved swiftly to suppress Hindu-Muslim violence in the town of Nepalgunj after a Hindu boy posted derogatory content about Muslims on social media. The police imposed a lockdown and took control overnight. Communal violence is unusual in Nepal.
Lumbini in Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, had expected a tourism boom after it got its own international airport, but India’s refusal to let westbound flights overfly its territory, and its ongoing conflict with China, has scuppered that.
After the suspension of its FCRA licence, Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research has been cut off from Rs 22 crore in funding, and is struggling for access to part of the money.
The Madras High Court has observed that the power to initiate criminal contempt proceedings is not a shield to be used to silence citizens in a free country, and that courts should not try to shield themselves from criticism.
Acting dean SR Wakode and a head paediatrician of the Dr Shankarrao Chavan Government Medical College and Hospital in Nanded, Maharashtra, where 31 deaths were recorded in 48 hours, have been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. A patient said that his daughter and her newborn child died for lack of care.
A cloudburst over Lhonak Lake in Sikkim, along with an earthquake which caused it to burst its banks and reduced its area under water by 100 hectares, may have flooded the Teesta basin and breached the Chungthang Dam, says the National Remote Sensing Centre.
An Indian-American student in the UK, whose life was saved by NHS doctors after a pulmonary embolism, has chosen a career in medicine.
Billionaire Mumbai builder Vikas Oberoi and his actor wife Gayatri Joshi are under investigation after a Swiss couple in their sixties were killed when his Lamborghini collided with a Ferrari during a supercar tour in Sardinia.
And Big Brother, no slouch in the acting department he, gives Vivek Agnihotri a helping hand out of the Vaccine War economic crisis.
https://x.com/Schandillia/status/1709902046101721362?s=20
Independent administrators would reduce caseload
India’s National Litigation Policy (NLP) remains a draft after 13 years, despite efforts to curb government litigation, finds The Hindu. Over 5 crore cases burden the judicial system, including frivolous government disputes. Judges call for responsible decision-making within government departments. Justice AP Shah told the Hindu that an atmosphere must be created where decisions can be made without fear of repercussions, due to some kind of protection accorded to officers. The NLP, originally conceived in 2010, has seen multiple iterations but remains unimplemented.
Bonded labour remains in coffee-growing areas
Though bonded labour was officially abolished in India in 1976, thousands of families in coffee-producing districts like Kodagu, Karnataka, remain trapped by debt on plantations, reports The Guardian. A coordinating committee on tribal rights, the Adivasi Hakkugala Samanvaya Samiti (AHSS), has been helping bonded labourers gain their freedom. AHSS has assisted around 1,500 labourers to leave plantations, but it's estimated that over 8,000 families in Kodagu are still trapped in debt bondage. While the law entitles them to compensation, the process is often slow, leaving many vulnerable to unscrupulous employers.
After IIT Bombay, IIT Hyderabad launches shuddh dining
After the controversy at IIT Bombay about segregated dining, IIT Hyderabad is now embroiled in a similar debate. The administration introduced a vegetarian-only dining hall after a students’ survey, sparking off heated discussions about non-vegetarians being forced to eat exclusively vegetarian food. Critics say that the decision may be rooted in caste dynamics, as a significant portion of the faculty at IIT Hyderabad belongs to upper caste groups. Students are divided and some feel pressured to conform to a vegetarian-only space.
Conservative Indian-origin politicians struggle to get gender
Indian-origin politicians overseas are embarrassingly right wing about gender politics. In the UK, PM Sunak scooted to the right at the Conservative Party conference by confusing gender with biological sex, and not for the first time: “We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man and a woman is a woman — that’s just common sense.”
In the US, during the GOP’s second debate, Vivek Ramaswamy said, “Transgenderism is a mental health disorder.” It’s delightfully 20th century.
The Long Cable
NewsClick Case: If Modi Govt is Really Serious About Terror Financing, Why Haven’t they Rung the US, China and FATF?
Siddharth Varadarajan
The cornerstone of the Delhi Police’s terrorism case against NewsClick and its founder Prabir Purkayastha is that he is the recipient of funds from an American businessman, Neville Roy Singham, who used US-based entities to transfer millions of dollars to India to fuel unrest aimed at disrupting supplies and services essential to the life of community in India. Why? To “abet damage and destruction of property”, all with a view to creating disaffection among various sections of society and “actively sympathising [with a] banned terrorist organisation so that unity, integrity, security, and sovereignty of the country can be threatened.”
The FIR makes it clear that Singham acted at the behest of China, since he is “an active member of the propaganda wing of the Communist Party of China”, and that two Chinese telecom companies, Xiaomi and Vivo, helped execute this conspiracy by setting up “thousands of shell companies” and “infusing foreign funds in India”.
So far, the police have arrested Purkayastha and another NewsClick employee under India’s stringent anti-terror law. Without going into the merits of the police case against NewsClick, the gravity of the charges themselves allow us to raise several questions about the Modi government’s seriousness in unearthing and prosecuting all the conspirators involved.
1. Has the Government of India requested the United States government to take action against and/or extradite its citizen, Neville Roy Singham, whose financing of NewsClick is being called a terrorist crime by the Delhi Police?
The FIR was filed on August 17, 2023, after the authorities say they had analysed hundreds of thousands of emails from Purkayastha’s accounts which were seized two years earlier when the Enforcement Directorate first raided the news portal’s offices.
Yet neither before nor after the FIR was filed does the government appear to have made any efforts to even interrogate Singham, even though he is accused number 3 in the FIR and is supposedly the financial lynchpin in the case.
2. Has the Government of India notified the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) secretariat in Paris that Neville Roy Singham and his companies are involved in terror financing so that all countries around the world can take action against him?
For the past few years, the Indian government has set much store by the FATF process to bring Pakistan to heel on the question of terror financing. Yet here, despite claiming to possess evidence of a major terrorist plot with international financial ramifications, New Delhi does not appear to have moved the FATF process at all.
3. Is it the Government of India's official stand that the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government it runs are sponsoring terrorism in India?
Delhi Police reports to the Union Home Ministry and if it is accusing an “active member” of the CPC with using illegal fund flows to push the official Chinese agenda in India, especially on the question of the status of Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, it stands to reason that the government believes China is aiding and abetting terrorism and related unlawful activities inside India. If this is so, will New Delhi now suspend all dialogue with Beijing, since the government’s official stand is that talks and terrorism cannot go hand in hand? Does the Modi government plan to ask China to reduce the number of diplomats it has stationed in India because the Chinese side – according to the police charge – is clearly interfering in India’s internal affairs, just as India has accused Canadian diplomats of interference.
4. While NewsClick is accused of indirectly receiving money from China, are the Enforcement Directorate, the NIA and the Special Cell of the Delhi Police going to now open UAPA and money laundering investigations into every Indian company that has received direct or indirect Chinese investment over the past 10 years?
Singham’s fund transfers to NewsClick came from the US via regular banking channels but the police and ED say the funds are actually from China and thus pose a threat to India’s unity and integrity. There are hundreds of companies in India that have actually received money directly from China-based entities in the form of FDI, FII and commercial orders. Does the Indian government intend to probe all those companies and seize the electronic devices of every CEO and promoter involved so that their emails and other messages can be scrutinised for evidence of anti-national activity?
5. Neville Roy Singham is now said to be a resident of Shanghai, according to the FIR. Has the Government of India written to the Chinese government demanding action against him – in the same way that it has asked Canada to act against anti-India terrorist elements on its soil?
Beijing may not cooperate but has the request even been made? And is the government ready to take escalatory steps against China in the event that Singham is not extradited?
6. Will the Modi government now pull the plug on Xiaomi and Vivo and expel them from India?
Xiaomi and Vivo have a major presence in India – as investors in other firms, as manufacturers and vendors of mobile phones. The ED has been investigating them for three years now and hundreds of crores of their money lie frozen in Indian banks but they still have major plans to ramp up production in India. What is more, they have been welcomed and encouraged by top Union government ministers. With the authorities now saying they have evidence of both firms illegally funnelling money into India as part of Singham’s conspiracy to destabilise the country, is it wise to allow them to expand their economic footprint in India?
What answers the Modi government has to these questions will tell us a lot about the terrorist conspiracy that lies at the centre of the police action against NewsClick.
Reportedly
On the morning following extensive police raids on the press, initial reports from newspapers stated that around 50 journalists and activists had been raised or questioned. However, the real number is 100 or more. Delhi Police are yet to issue an official statement. The government loves suspense.
Prime Number: –22 lakh
Ahead of the Telangana Assembly elections, the Election Commission of India has removed over 22 lakh voter names from the electoral rolls. Telangana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Vikas Raj announced that more than three crore people (3,17,17,389) are eligible to vote, but 22,02,168 names have been deleted in the past two years, including 4,89,574 voters from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and surrounding areas.
Deep Dive
Last week, the Indian Army unveiled plans to explore the rich heritage of indigenous military systems, tracing their historical evolution, studying strategies handed down through generations, and delving into the millennia-old strategic wisdom of the region. Strangely, though, the Army’s spokesperson suggests that “classical” texts after the 8th century won’t be studied. But it needs a broader ambit, says Anirudh Kanisetti. “It is worth asking, also, if the state described in the Arthashastra is the kind that we want… The Arthashastra is best appreciated as a product of a bygone period, similar to many other texts and ideas on rulership produced by Indians over the centuries.” However, in any case, the ancient texts are no substitute for already existing précis and training manuals, says Manvendra Singh on Project Udbhav.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
“Across the democratic world, journalistic material has a much higher degree of protection” from interference, writes Prasanna S on the NewsClick issue.
The New York Times must ask hard questions about whether it has allowed itself to become a tool for authoritarian propaganda and criminalisation of journalism, writes Kavita Krishnan, noting that she had warned the NYT’s reporters that their story would be weaponised against Indian journalists.
Shekhar Mande and Dinesh Sharma discuss the removal of cash incentives from science awards with Jacob Koshy.
Canada must stand firm in pursuit of justice for murdered Canadian Sikh, says the Toronto Star in an editorial.
Lt Gen HS Panag (Retd) argues that the new disability pension policy for soldiers will discourage young Indians from joining the military. He says that a military life aggravates common medical problems, and the change in disability pension policy is a retrograde step.
To arrive at a proper assessment of household income trends, one must consider both financial and physical savings and then juxtapose that with consumption. Dhananjay Sinha and Sinhapurvi Mundhra say that the fall in recent household savings reflects falling incomes and rising cost of living. Housing loans are falling and other consumption loans are increasing, indicating that household’s are living on credit.
Competing for space and attention against the far more constantly engaging and instantly gratifying T20s, the 50-over game has long been facing a crisis of identity, writes Parth Pandya.
Why is Modern Indian Architecture so banal and the cities so unlivable, asks Ramu Katakam.
Listen up
On the Ideas of India podcast, Shruti Rajagopalan and Rithika Kumar discuss the impact of male migration on female political engagement in Bihar, the feminisation of politics and norms holding back women.
Watch out
“The Narendra Modi Stadium is a kind of metaphor for the BJP’s inroads into the BCCI and the dark heart of Indian cricket,” Aussie cricket writer Gideon Haigh tells Sharda Ugra in The Wire's new show ‘Out of the Park’. “It was a dry run for what we’re about to see. You’ve got a hint of the way in which the BJP is going to harness the power and the symbolism of cricket to its electoral advantage,” he adds.
Over and out
Goa’s rich history includes the lavish 17th century mansions left behind by prosperous merchants and landowners of the time. Nikkei Asia writes about Goa’s heritage architecture and Indo-Portuguese mansions built with local materials and labour, and a host of Indian influences.
The once-ubiquitous bulbul tarang, which seems to have been RD Burman’s favourite instrument, used to find use in a range of formats, from film music to bhajans. But the advent of electronics has swept away India’s entry level keyboard instrument of choice, says Ullas Ponnadi in Scroll.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.