On October 29, The Wire filed a complaint at the Economic Offence Wing of the Delhi Police against its former employee and so-called ‘researcher’ Devesh Kumar, claiming he provided forged documents with “an intent to malign The Wire’s reputation”. Furthermore, it was noted by The Wire in its complaint that Devesh named Philip Chua, APAC Head of Public Policy at Instagram as the person who provided him with a ‘Post Incident Review Report’ that had pointed fingers at Bharatiya Janata Party’s Amit Malviya as the person responsible for the post takedown.
Devesh seemed ‘highly disturbed mentally’, claims The Wire.
The Wire claimed in its complaint that following the internal investigation and review of the material sent by Devesh by ‘reputed’ outside sources when they tried to contact Devesh, he did not revert. However, he called The Wire’s Product and Business Head Mithun Kidambi on October 27 and “confessed to fabricating all the material” that The Wire used in its Meta stories. “The impression Kidambi gathered was that Devesh Kumar seemed highly disturbed mentally,” claimed The Wire.
The complaint was sent to the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravinder Singh Yadav on Saturday (October 29). The Print quoted Yadav saying that he received the complaint and the Police were “looking into the matter”. Police were yet to send a confirmation of the receipt of the complaint to The Wire’s founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan.
Details of the complaint
As per The Print’s report, The Wire has accused Kumar of “fabricating and supplying documents, emails, and video with a view to damage The Wire’s reputation”. It was further noted that from April 2021 to July 2022, Kumar worked at The Wire as a consultant on a month-to-month remuneration basis.
The Wire added that though Devesh had nothing to do with the story on the Instagram post takedown that was published on October 6, he contacted the reporter (possibly Jahnavi Sen) and informed that he got additional information from his friend from Instagram.
The complaint read, “On October 6, 2022, The Wire published a story about an abrupt takedown of a post on Instagram based on an email we received from the concerned account holder, which is a matter of record. Thereafter, Devesh Kumar, who had nothing to do with that story, got in touch with our reporter and told us that he had received information from a personal friend of his who is a senior executive at Instagram’s office in Singapore named Philip Chua.”
Devesh “forwarded” the email that he claimed came from Chua using a messaging app with the username ‘Antadweep’ to Sen (username ‘Jeeva’). The suggested email and the ‘Post Incident Review Report’ attached to it claimed Amit Malviya was behind the takedown. The complaint read, “There was no basis at that time to suspect it was fraudulent, nor indeed the ‘Post Incident Review Report’, which the email had alluded to. Believing the said email and the ‘Post Incident Review Report’ document Devesh Kumar sent us to be correct, The Wire published a story based on this material on October 10.”
The complaint further stated that Devesh claimed to have received the email on his Protonmail account, and it was shared on the messaging app. However, later he deleted the attachment from the messaging app and shared the email with Varadarajan over the Signal app. “Two further stories on 15 and 17 October were also all based on electronic documentation including emails and videos provided by Devesh Kumar, purportedly from Instagram and Meta and two independent experts,” the complaint added.
In its complaint, The Wire claimed they got the review done with the help of “reputed outside experts” who informed them that the documents and material provided by Devesh were fabricated. The fabricated material included “the documents and emails and videos from Instagram and Meta, as well as the emails by two reputed experts purportedly vetting the Andy Stone email,” the complaint suggested.
FIR lodged against The Wire
On October 29, BJP’s Amit Malviya filed a complaint with Delhi Police against The Wire, its editors, and reporters and said they published a series of stories with the intent to tarnish his reputation. Based on his complaint, an FIR was registered under Sections 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery with the purpose of cheating), 469 (forgery for harming reputation), 471 (using forged document), 500 (defamation), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. The FIR was lodged after The Wire took down Meta stories that claimed Malviya was able to take down Instagram posts critical to the government, no questions asked.
Is the Wire trying to shun responsibility by blaming it all on Devesh Kumar?
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.”
The story on Meta had bylines by Wire’s Siddharth Varadarajan and Jahnavi Sen. The now-retracted story titled “Exclusive: ‘How the Hell Did Document Leak?’ – Meta Internal Mail Belies ‘Fabricated’ Charge Against The Wire”, added Devesh Kumar’s name later, only for the artwork used.
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.
Devesh Kumar was not named by Amit Malaviya in his FIR.
