‘Our documents are being checked’: ED raids Newsclick office, residences of senior management

On Tuesday morning, officers of the Enforcement Directorate began a raid at the office of Newsclick, an online news portal.

The office, which is located in Delhi’s Saidulajab, remains closed as of now.

At about 2.30 pm, Pranjal, one of the editors at the portal, stepped out, flanked by two ED officers, and said: “There’s been an ongoing raid since morning. We were shown a notice. Right now, our documents are being checked”. He confirmed that the homes of some of Newsclick’s senior management were also being raided, including human resources head Amit Chakravarty, editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha, and Pranjal himself.

The ED officers did not allow the media to record Pranjal’s statement.

While the ED officers refused to speak on record, one officer outside the Newsclick office told Newslaundry, on the condition of anonymity, that this was “just a routine check”.

The Hindu quoted a senior ED official as saying that the raid was conducted in connection with a “money laundering case pertaining to foreign funding”. This was also reported by the Quint.

For the last three months, Newsclick has regularly covered the farmer protests on its YouTube channel, which has over 2.94 million subscribers. The channel hosts journalists like Abhisar Sharma, Urmilesh Singh, and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.