Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday hit out the Delhi Police for raiding the premises of the online news portal NewsClick, saying it was “unfortunate and a disgrace to democracy and traditions of freedom”.

“Freedom of the press is fundamental to any democracy…In our country, we have a very very long record of Supreme Court judgments upholding the freedom of the press in our country. I believe the government erred. If there is a charge of foreign funding that is illegal or improper, there are right ways to investigate it. But confiscating journalists’ laptops and depriving them of access is not right,” Tharoor told the media.

He added,” There is something really wrong with this kind of approach.”

Hitting out at the BJP-led Centre, the Congress leader said,” It is the action of a very insecure and frankly autocratic government…It is truly unacceptable.”

On Tuesday morning, a special cell of the Delhi Police held searches at the office of the online portal NewsClick and journalists associated with it. The raids quickly spread out to at least 35 locations across Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Mumbai and Ghaziabad, with the police confiscating the laptops and mobile phones of journalists, freelancers, writers, and satirists, and questioning them for around eight hours.

Hours later, the police arrested NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakravarty. On Wednesday, the two were sent to police custody for seven days.

The crackdown on NewsClick came nearly two months after an investigation published in The New York Times (NYT) alleged that the online portal was part of a global network that received money from American billionaire Neville Roy Singham for pushing Chinese propaganda. The report had also cited some emails purportedly sent by Singham to NewsClick in which he wanted a series of articles to highlight China’s steps to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.