the police demand data from those who finance independent journalism

Many of those who have donated fear becoming a new target of government repression. Razorpay shared with the authorities part of the information about the payments made to altnews, an independent site dedicated to fact-checking. One of the co-founders, Muhammad Zubair, is inundated with court cases following his arrest last month.

New Delhi () – Razorpay, an Indian payment company, has been accused of violating the privacy data of its customers. However, as the site notes rest of world, the case is much more complicated. In June, the Delhi police had arrested journalist Muhammad Zubair, co-founder of the verification site altnewsfor a tweet published in 2018 referring to the Hindu nationalists, a party that came to power in 2014.

Unlike the big media, which are financed by advertising, altnews receives donations from readers. Thanks to them, in recent years the site of fact checking managed to dismantle various propaganda content from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu ultra-nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Now, illegally, the authorities investigating the case have obtained access to the payment data of the donations made through Razorpay. The police said they would investigate donations from abroad, which altnews He says he has never received

Many people who donated now fear becoming a new target of government repression. As an example, the Internet Freedom Foundation, a civil society organization that has used Razorpay, said it was exploring the possibility of using other “payment platforms” to make donors feel more comfortable.

The payment company explained, however, that it had not shared all the data it had with the authorities: “Only a small part of the donor data was shared to help an ongoing investigation. We also defended the right of altnews to continue accepting payments until the investigation is complete, and once we got the go-ahead, we reactivated the payments to your account.”

According to lawyer Dharmendra Chatur, a partner in the law firm Poovayya & Co., if Razorpay had not complied with the investigators’ order, he would have initiated “unnecessary litigation” because, according to the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, the police authorities have the power to demand information and documents about a crime that is being investigated.

Only after Muhammed Zubair’s arrest in June were further legal action taken against the journalist and his fact-checking work. Today, a court in Uttar Pradesh will hold a hearing at which the founder of altnews in a case dating back to last year in which Zubair had faked a video about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broadcast on the television network SudarshanNews.

However, in another lawsuit, the Supreme Court of India yesterday granted provisional release to the journalist, who in this case had been sued for reporting on the tweets of some personalities who spread hate speech against Muslims.