The Wire has accused one of its former employees and ‘tech expert’ of duping them by providing forged documents and evidence in the Meta stories. Devesh Kumar, who has worked on multiple stories for The Wire, is currently AWOL after he deleted his presence from the Internet entirely.
Since his name started to appear frequently following the Meta stories and fell apart, some disturbing and concerning facts about his history have come to light. Devesh also worked on Tek Fog “investigation” for The Wire. Those stories have also been pulled down by the portal. Interestingly, Devesh appeared on several platforms after Tek Fog stories and “explained” the investigation.
One such session with Devesh was done by the left-wing student organisation All India Students Association or AISA. On January 21, after Tek Fog’s story “shook” the nation, Devesh was called for an online session by AISA titled “Is the BJP-RSS regime turning skilled Young people into Criminals?”
In the session, Devesh explained the investigation he did with Ayushman for The Wire over a period of 20 months. He claimed that they found how trends were being run during the investigation. However, in the middle of QA during the session, he said, “We do not have any proof if these trends were being run via Tek Fog.” He added that BJP leader Kapil Mishra had quoted the story and said he should have been approached to know if he uses Tek Fog. Devesh said he told Mishra there was no proof, but it was about the network.
He further explained how Kapil Mishra and OpIndia were two main accounts that were the base points of the discussions on social media during the Delhi Riots. It was obvious OpIndia would have come up while checking trends on Delhi Riots as we were consistently covering the riots. Our stories exposed the biased of the mainstream media. OpIndia busted several misleading reports and propaganda against Hindus in the aftermath of the Delhi Riots 2020.
Devesh claimed that the content of OpIndia was non-verifiable, and portals like Alt News had raised questions over our coverage. However, the investigation into the Delhi Riots by the agencies, as well as remarks by different courts, proved on several occasions that our reporting was spot on about the larger conspiracy behind the riots.
The curious history of Devesh Kumar
Twitter user Herin Maru, who goes by the handle her1n on the platform, published a detailed thread on the curious history of Devesh. Here is what he pointed out in his thread. We are adding only those details that we could independently verify.
Adopting a girl child at the age of 19
In 2016, Devesh claimed in a blog post that he had adopted a girl child from a dead mother and HIV-positive parents. The timeline that Devesh mentioned was the time when he was only 19 years old and unmarried. Legally it was not possible for Devesh to adopt a child, that too a girl at the age of 19 while being single. It is possible that by adoption, he meant he was paying for the child’s day-to-day expenses, including food, schooling etc by way of sponsorship.
During his TEDx talk in 2014 titled – “The addiction of doing things”, it’s mentioned that he volunteered for NACO for 6 yrs, and AID India for 3 yrs.
— Herin (@her1n) October 30, 2022
He claims a baby girl died in his arms, whose parents died due to AIDS.
After this he adopted Manjiri.https://t.co/yniHANADgj pic.twitter.com/JL5FHJvlL0
Devesh named the girl child Manjiri. In 2019, he claimed in a blog post that the girl child died. Manjiri, according to him, was only eight years old. He said that she died as a construction brick fell on her and crushed her head. Devesh claimed he did not go to see her one last time.
In his 2019 blogpost, he claimed that Manjiri (8) had passed away and he couldn’t find the courage to see her the last time.
— Herin (@her1n) October 30, 2022
Let us assume that though he had not legally adopted her, but he was paying for her daycare and education, while working away.https://t.co/MS4H92Nr3K pic.twitter.com/mHrnnm7m8m
Women died around him a lot…
In a Quora post around five years ago, he mentioned that a 19-year-old woman named Rabya died in front of him in 2011. He claimed that he wanted to pay for her breast cancer treatment, but she passed away only 15 minutes after he promised to cover her bills.
In his Quora post, Devesh claims that his colleague Manvi all of a sudden passed away after a week of fever, typhoid and brain hemorrhage; just some before their project’s presentation.https://t.co/se9KC8v8X8 pic.twitter.com/rwm2MqmgVc
— Herin (@her1n) October 30, 2022
According to another Quora post, Devesg said that another woman named Manvi died in 2011. She died after getting typhoid and a brain haemorrhage. Both Rabya and Manvi were talented women who died at an early age, he claimed.
In his Quora post, Devesh claims that his colleague Manvi all of a sudden passed away after a week of fever, typhoid and brain hemorrhage; just some before their project’s presentation.https://t.co/se9KC8v8X8 pic.twitter.com/rwm2MqmgVc
— Herin (@her1n) October 30, 2022
In a 2016 post, Devesh claimed to have met a 12-year-old girl named Radhika in 2009. She passed away four years later, in 2013, due to HIV. She was allegedly abused by a police officer.
In his 2016 blogpost, Devesh claimed he met Radhika (12) at NACO. She was sexually abused by a policeman, and passed away 4 years later due to HIV.
— Herin (@her1n) November 1, 2022
Another friend/colleague of his from JNU, a drug addict, made it great in life. But Snigdha passed away.https://t.co/wSvfpmxtwP pic.twitter.com/WWGeuP6OSx
She also had a colleague named Snigdha who had passed away for reasons not mentioned in the blog post. However, he mentioned that another colleague who was drug-addicted fixed her life and named her child Snigdha.
It is unclear why so many women around him had such deep troubles, deaths and whatnot. Men around him seem to have lived a happy life.
A lot of money spent at a young age
Devesh claimed to have spent quite a large amount at a very young age. However, his posts where he boasted about spending money stopped at one point. Herin pointed out that this was when he started posting about running parallel servers to run bots to defeat BJP IT cell and allegedly organising conferences to raise funds.
If you have read between the lines, there is a possibility that he has many lenders, who were due.
— Herin (@her1n) October 30, 2022
But his flow of money stopped, and this is where his Reddit and Meta journey started, by asking for more monetary support.
• https://t.co/3DmCyuveSU
• https://t.co/St2kcZJUS2 pic.twitter.com/unPUKOPXDj
OpIndia has a detailed report on Devesh’s claims about running a parallel IT cell to counter “BJP’s attempts to use social media for political gains”. He had claimed that he was spending lakhs of Rupees from his pocket to run up to 40 servers on Amazon Web Services to run and manipulate bots on Twitter. He had claimed that he was hijacking Twitter trends and polls using these bots. Essentially, he was doing the same thing using Twitter bots that he had claimed BJP was doing using Tek Fog, and he had justified his actions.
Devesh stole credit for illustrations
Another Twitter user Banbreach published a Tweet thread on October 31, explaining how illustrations credited to Devesh Kumar were created by someone else. A story written by Devesh on the Pegasus application is still available on The Wire. The story featured an artwork that was previously credited to Devesh. However, later it was credited to absurd.design and a footnote was added, “The article has been edited to reflect that the featured illustrations, previously credited to Devesh Kumar, are by illustrator Diana Valeanu, from absurd.design.”
The now famous @thewire_in ex-contributor glibly stole illustration credits from @madebyabsurd. pic.twitter.com/DmOPPkTWwH
— Banbreach (@Banbreach) October 31, 2022
The dubious claim of winning the Microsoft award
In the TedX speaker’s description, it was mentioned he won Devesh has also won the prestigious Microsoft Imagine Cup (India). However, the description failed to mention that his team, D Labs, had won the “people’s choice award”. It is clearly mentioned on the Microsoft website as well. Herin quoted a Twitter user saying Devesh lied about the award in the college and allegedly used scripts to get votes for his team. OpIndia could not verify the tweets as they seemed to have been deleted.
In a report, OpIndia’s editor Nirwa Mehta explored an AMA session on Tek Fog hosted by The Wire’s Siddharth Vardarajan. The session meted out how conveniently Devesh, Ayushman and The Wire kept on building a story based on an app that “never existed”. You can check the details here.
