Journalists’ unions on Thursday marked the first anniversary of the police raids on news website NewsClick and the homes of its employees.

NewsClick editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha, out on bail, told the gathering at the Press Club of India (PCI): “Till today our devices are in the Forensic Sciences Laboratory. Our research, our book drafts are in them…. Archives of the movements we have covered were dismantled and taken away. I don’t know if we will ever be able to retrieve all this.”

NewsClick faces five parallel investigations by the Delhi police, Enforcement Directorate, income tax department and the CBI on multiple charges, including terrorism, for allegedly accepting funds illegally from Shanghai-based US investor Neville Roy Singham.

The news website, which has been critical of the BJP, has been unable to pay salaries to its 70-odd employees this year as its accounts are still frozen.

Purkayastha said: “We should not forget that we need air, water and earth to grow. That earth belongs to the people. Until it is fertile, we cannot be creative. We are at a juncture where although the government’s attitude and tactics have not changed and the tools are the same, the people are listening to us. They are speaking out…. How many people can you silence?

“Whoever is trying to stop this (free flow of news), is like the king who told the waves of the sea to stop…. They are in a dream world and not understanding reality. Our freedom of expression is in the hands of the people. If the people are awakened, this freedom can’t be stopped. We are close to that situation.”

The PCI, Delhi Union of Journalists, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Press Association and the Kerala Union of Working Journalists said in a joint resolution: “Noting that the right to work and to profess one’s occupation and profession is a constitutional right under the Directive Principles of State Policy, journalists and all those associated with the profession have to be given the right to practice and profess their occupation under this right.

“We the undersigned organisations, with the consent of everyone present here, believe that the State should provide, as mandated under the Directive Principles, effective provisions for securing the right to work and an enabling environment for guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression of every citizen including the media. The right to life, a fundamental constitutional right, cannot exist without the right to work. The two are inextricably connected.

“We note that the seizure of professional equipment like laptops, phones and computers without following due process and for an indefinite period of time amounts to an attack on livelihood and the right to work without intimidation.”

Leaders of the journalists’ groups, The Wire’s founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan, independent journalist Neelu Vyas Thomas, Frontline’s bureau chief T.K. Rajalakshmi and others spoke at the event where video messages from P. Sainath, founding editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, and N. Ram, director of The Hindu Publishing Group, were also played.

Ram said: “With the ruling party losing its majority in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the ground has shifted beneath the strongman’s feet with cracks opening up in various places. You can see some positive changes in various institutions including courts and the media in responding to the authoritarian State’s arbitrary actions. The only way to defend our right to speech and expression is to exercise it, individually and collectively, come what may.”

Ram and others spoke in solidarity with journalists in Jammu and Kashmir, Malayalam journalist Siddique Kappan who is also out on bail after having spent three years in jail, and journalists in Punjab facing police harassment.