Hours after Delhi Police filed FIR against The Wire, its founder and editors over a complaint filed by Bhartiya Janata Party’s IT Cell Chief Amit Malviya, The Wire has filed a complaint against one of the Meta stories, and Tek Fog stories author Devesh Kumar. Notably, Devesh Kumar has removed all his social media presence since the stories on Meta, and Tek Fog were retracted by The Wire. No complaint has been filed against the co-author of Tek Fog stories and voice behind the controversial DKIM video Ayushman Kaul, who works at Logically.ai.
As per reports, a Delhi Police officer said that The Wire had filed a complaint against Devesh Kumar at the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police. “The complaint has been filed against Devesh Kumar, who is allegedly involved in the fabrication of documents and forgery. This is in connection with all the Meta stories that were published this month,” said an officer. So far, FIR has not been registered, and the Police are looking into the complaint and allegations.
FIR against The Wire
Earlier, Delhi police registered an FIR against leftist portal The Wire on a complaint filed by BJP leader Amit Malviya for the fake Meta story that has been retracted. Earlier today, Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya filed a criminal complaint against The Wire and its editorial team for their now-withdrawn Meta reports against him. The complaint was filed with The Special Commissioner of Police – Crime of the Delhi Police. Amit Malviya has said The Wire falsified papers in an effort to slander and damage his reputation.
Apart from the left-wing portal The Wire, Amit Malviya has named its founder editors, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and MK Venu, and Deputy Editor Jahnavi Sen, as accused in the complaint. Apart from this, a complaint has also been filed against unknown persons. Jahnavi Sen had written the report on October 10 claiming that Amit Malviya has been given Xcheck privilege to remove content from Instagram.
Notably, Devesh Kumar and Ayushman Kaul were not named by Amit Malviya in his complaint. While Devesh worked extensively on Meta and Tek Fog stories, Kaul was a co-author in Tek Fog stories and gave voice to the controversial DKIM video by The Wire.
Questions that remain unanswered from The Wire
It is noteworthy that The Wire has thrown Devesh Kumar under the bus despite the fact that The Wire’s Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan categorically said in an interview with Platformer that he was “hands-on involved in the story”. In the interview, he had said, “I don’t think we should make this about Devesh, frankly. This should be equally about me; I was hands-on involved in the story. The point is that, yes, there were some questions raised by some aspects of Tek Fog, but a lot of it actually was validated.”
Aha! Now, @svaradarajan filed a police complaint against Devesh Kumar.
— S. Sudhir Kumar (@ssudhirkumar) October 30, 2022
Remember: On Oct 19, @svaradarajan told @platformer that this is not about Devesh. It is equally about him too. @newspaperwallah even told us how great @svaradarajan is.
Who still trusts SidV out there? pic.twitter.com/oVmgeNLfzf
The now-retracted story titled “Exclusive: ‘How the Hell Did Document Leak?’ – Meta Internal Mail Belies ‘Fabricated’ Charge Against The Wire” has bylines of Jahnavi Sen and Siddharth Varadarajan. If the fabricated documents were, in fact, provided by Devesh, why was he not given credit in the story? If we look at the archive version of this particular story, Devesh only got credit for the artwork used. The rest of the credit was with Jahnavi and Siddharth.
Notably, Devesh did get byline with Jahnavi and Siddharth in a follow-up report dated October 15 titled “Meta Said Damaging Internal Email is ‘Fake’, URL ‘Not in Use’, Here’s Evidence They’re Wrong”. It should be kept in mind both Jahnavi and Siddharth were co-authors of this story as well.
Meta Vs The Wire saga
On October 6, The Wire published a report that an alleged satire piece was removed by Instagram. This post had byline of Jahnavi Sen, who is also named in police complaint filed by Malviya. On October 10, The Wire published another story claiming it was Amit Malviya who got the post removed. This report, too, has only Sen’s byline. When Meta denied allegations, they came up with another story claiming Andy Stone, Head of Communication at Meta, was furious as the information regarding powers given to XCheck-linked accounts got leaked. This third story had Sen and Siddharth Varadarajan’s bylines. For first three stories, in this Meta controversy where forged documents were published, only Sen and Varadarajan took bylines. Only in the subsequent articles was Devesh Kumar given a byline as lead author.
This report contained verification of emails via DKIM (voiced by Ayushman Kaul) and the same had Ujjwal Kumar’s mail as well as ‘evidence’. All of which has now turned up fake. Kumar and Kaul had earlier paired up for The Wire’s ‘exposé’ on Tek Fog app, which claimed to have superhuman powers, again powered by BJP. The ‘app’ never existed and here also it is likely all the screenshots provided by The Wire were fabricated. The Wire has now taken down Tek Fog related stories too. However, The Wire has filed complaint only against Devesh Kumar till now with respect to Meta absurdity.
