Delhi HC quashes FIR, ED case against NewsClick
The Delhi High Court has quashed the Economic Offences Wing (EOW's) FIR as well as Enforcement Directorate (ED) ECIR against news portal NewsClick and its editor-in-Chief, Prabir Purkayastha, registered over allegations of foreign funding.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna held that even if the allegations in the FIR were accepted in entirety, the essential ingredients of offences under Sections 406 and 420 of IPC were not made out.
The Court further observed that the continuation of such FIR was nothing but a gross abuse of the process of law, thereby quashing the EOW FIR as well as the ECIR lodged by ED.
“It has been held that if the FIR under predicate offence is quashed, the ECIR automatically, is liable to be quashed. Consequently, the complete ECIR is also quashed. Once the ECIR itself is quashed, the prayer for supply of the copy of the ECIR has become infructuous,” the judge ruled.
The FIR, registered in August 2020 on a complaint forwarded by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, alleged that NewsClick had received Rs 9.59 crore in FDI from US-based Worldwide Media Holdings LLC through an allegedly overvalued share transaction designed to circumvent FDI restrictions.
It was alleged that a substantial portion of the funds was siphoned off through salaries, consultancy fees and other expenses. After due investigations, the copy of FIR was forwarded to the Enforcement Directorate and the ECIR was registered.
Quashing the cases, the Court said that it was an admitted position that M/s Worldwide Media Holdings LLC agreed to invest a total of USD 4.5 Million in three tranches of USD 1.5 M each in exchange of total 23.07 per cent shares of NewsClick's company PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt. Ltd.
It further noted that the first tranche of 1.5 million was received by the platform on April 11, 2018.
