Delhi Police raid houses of The Wire editors, seize laptops, mobile phones

The police searched the homes of Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu, the founding editors of The Wire, and seized their phones and laptops.

A complaint by Amit Malaviya has accused the duo of cheating and forgery.

The complaint alleges that The Wire "forged documents to malign and tarnish" his reputation.

The wire recently retracted a series of investigative reports that claimed that Meta, the parent company of social media giants WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, had given certain privileges to Malviya, which he used to take down posts that he thought were critical of the BJP.

Malviya, on the other hand, alleged that The Wire also published a fake story stating that a superhuman app "Tek Fog" was used by the BJP to intercept social media posts.

Meta and various other experts pointed out critical flaws in their reporting.

Following this, The Wire conducted an internal review of the "technical source material used, with the help of external experts" and retracted the story.

In a statement, The Wire said it was conducting a comprehensive editorial review of the internal editorial processes "which resulted in the publication of these stories in order to identify and plug any and all shortcomings".

The Wire has also filed a complaint against one of its former consultants, Devesh Kumar, who allegedly gave the fabricated details.

"Whether the person who brought all the material to The Wire deceived us at anyone' else's behest or acted on his own is a matter that will be subjected to judicial process in due course. The malintent to discredit The Wire is obvious," the statement said.