A Delhi police team has questioned a former NewsClick journalist at her home at Pathanamthitta in Kerala and allegedly seized her laptop and mobile phone.
The team of two men and a woman, who liaised with the local police, visited the family home of Anusha Paul, 32, in Kodumon late on Friday and questioned her about her links with CPM leaders in Delhi and NewsClick’s funding.
“They took away my laptop and mobile phone. The questions (they asked) were like, when did I start working with NewsClick, and isn’t NewsClick receiving funds from China,” she told reporters.
Paul, an office-bearer with CPM youth wing DYFI in Delhi, added: “I don’t have to fear anyone since I have not taken any money from anyone.”
Paul worked with NewsClick from 2018 to 2021 and has since been an independent journalist. The long-time Delhi resident was visiting her home in Kerala to attend to an ailing family member.
She is a state committee member with the CPM’s Delhi unit, and Delhi state treasurer of the DYFI.
Paul said the police had asked her to be present in Delhi but did not clarify if she had been set a deadline.
She said she was also asked whether she had covered the protests against the citizenship matrix or the farmer agitation, or written about how the Union government had managed the Covid pandemic.
The FIR that forms the basis for the Delhi police raid on NewsClick and the arrests of its editor-in-chief and HR head accuses the news website of a conspiracy to prolong the farmers’ protest through illegal foreign funding and running false narratives to discredit the Centre’s response to the Covid pandemic, among other things.
The police asked Paul whether she knew K.M. Tiwari, the Delhi state CPM secretary, and probed her association with him and the party, Paul said.
“I know him and I told them that. He is the CPM secretary; I am a CPM worker,” she said.
She accused the Delhi police of a “witch-hunt to threaten the organisation and its employees who raise their voices against (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi and the RSS”.
DYFI sources in Kerala said they didn’t know much about Paul, possibly since she is based in Delhi.
The Kerala DYFI had on Thursday held a protest outside the state secretariat building against the “witch-hunt” against media houses and journalists by the Delhi police and central agencies.
A large number of DYFI activists participated in the protest, where several leaders spoke against the arrests and harassment of NewsClick journalists.
