The Supreme Court on Friday issued fresh notice to the Centre on news portal NewsClick and its founder Prabir Purkayastha seeking a direction to the government to specify “guidelines regarding search, seizure, examination, preservation and sharing of digital and electronic devices and the data contained therein”.

A bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and Sandeep Mehta sought the response of the authorities after senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for NewsClick, submitted that the court had also issued notices on separate but similar petitions filed by the Foundation for Media Professionals and a group of academics expressing grave concern over the arbitrary exercise of search and seizure powers by investigating agencies like the ED, CBI, Economic Offences Wing and the police.

Besides the ministry of home affairs, notices were issued to the CBI, ministry of finance, income tax department, ED and the Delhi police.

Sibal complained that the authorities did not follow any procedure while conducting searches on the premises of NewClick last year over alleged money-laundering offences.

“No procedure was followed. No documents were served,” and if the court does not intervene, “they will stop our business, seize everything and put people inside,” Sibal said.

The petition drawn up by Arshdeep Singh Khurana said the petitioners have faced the adverse consequences of the Centre’s “arbitrariness, absence of due process, and disproportionate and excessive abuse of power in en masse raids conducted at their offices and residences of various employees/ journalists employed with the petitioner company”.

According to NewsClick's petition, the Centre has been targeting the organisation, its shareholders, directors, journalists, media professionals and other employees, including Purkayastha, in order “to curb and violate the fundamental rights of the petitioners and the… stakeholders associated with them and thereby, cause a chilling effect on the exercise of their fundamental rights enshrined under Part III of the Constitution”.

It was submitted that investigating agencies had conducted multiple investigations and raids at numerous places over the past two-three years, “investigating identical/ overlapping allegations in an absolutely arbitrary, excessive and unlawful manner, and have thereby seized several documents, records and digital and electronic devices of the petitioners and various individuals including journalists, media professionals, employees, shareholders, directors, etc, all with the sole aim of shutting down the unbiased and critical reporting of the policies/ measures and activities of the central government”.

The petition alleged that the government had also registered a false FIR implicating the founder and several NewsClick employees for various offences under the IPC and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act “on the basis of false and frivolous allegations”.

According to the petition, the officials had seized digital and electronic equipment and devices of the company, Purkayastha, shareholders, directors, journalists, employees, consultants, freelancers and other media professionals and in certain cases documents and devices belonging to the family members of staff members and even those individuals who neither had any relation with the operations of NewsClick nor any role in the decision-making process of the company, such as caretakers, contractors, vendors and former employees.

“It is submitted that the operation and functioning of NewsClick has come to the brink of a standstill due to the aforesaid unlawful search and seizure proceedings and the Petitioner No. 1 Company has been constrained to function at a limited capacity, through borrowed or crowdsourced devices and without access to its vast database,” the petition said.