The Delhi Police conducted raids at the houses of the Wire’s founder Siddharth Varadarajan and editor MK Venu in Delhi on Monday night.
Stating that nobody had been arrested or detained, the police said that they would be searching the pair's electronic devices in order to collect evidence in the case currently filed against The Wire.
Laptops and mobile phones from their residences have been seized, Delhi Police said.
Earlier on October 29, the Delhi Police had filed an FIR against The Wire and its editors based on a complaint by BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya, who accused it of "cheating and forgery" and "tarnishing" his reputation in connection with a "fabricated" story.
Malviya had on October 28 said he will pursue criminal and civil proceedings against the portal over stories, since retracted, which insinuated that he enjoyed a special privilege on Meta platforms through which he could get any story taken down if he believed it was against the BJP's interests.
“The police came at around 4.40 pm and left at 6 pm,” MK Venu was quoted saying to Scroll.in. “They said they have come here on behalf of Delhi Police Crime Branch for the FIR filed by Amit Malviya. They have taken my iPhone and iPad for cloning.”
Malviya's complaint was filed with Delhi Police's special commissioner (crime) against 'The Wire', its founding editors Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M K Venu, deputy editor and executive news producer Jahnavi Sen, the Foundation for Independent Journalism and some unknown people.
Meanwhile, 'The Wire' on October 29, filed a police complaint against its former consultant Devesh Kumar in connection with the "fabricated" story.
The Wire-Meta issue
The Wire, known for its critical reporting on the Central government, wrote a series of sensational stories this month that claimed Malviya had been granted special powers by Meta to take down posts on Instagram without any input from the company’s content moderators.
To back this up, The Wire published screenshots of internal reports and emails it said it had accessed from sources within Meta. But former Meta employees and whistleblowers, tech experts in India and Silicon Valley, and Meta itself said the claims were untrue and questioned the authenticity of the evidence.
“We accept scrutiny of our content decisions, but we fundamentally reject these false allegations based on what we believe to be fabricated evidence. We hope that The Wire is the victim of this hoax, not the perpetrator,” Meta said in a statement.
Nonetheless, The Wire doubled down and followed up with more stories claiming the internal emails it had accessed were true, even though independent technical experts continued to cast doubts on its findings and said the documents it made public appeared to be forged.
Amid mounting criticism, The Wire last week retracted its articles and opened an internal review of its reporting and editorial processes. The news website said it had found inconsistencies in its stories but stopped short of saying they were fabricated.
On October 27, however, the publication posted a public apology on its website and said that one unnamed member of its staff had deceived the organization and that it lacked the expertise to vet technical stories.
(With inputs from AP)