"No Coercive Action": Delhi High Court Grants Interim Protection To NewsClick Editor-In-Chief In Money Laundering Case

The Delhi High Court on Monday granted interim protection to NewsClick Editor in Chief Prabir Purkayastha and PPK Newsclick Studio Private Limited, which owns the news portal till July 5 in connection with the money laundering case registered against it by the Enforcement Directorate.

A single judge bench comprising of Justice Jasmeet Singh directed the Enforcement Directorate to not take any coercive action against the news portal.

The Court also sought response from the Enforcement Directorate in a plea seeking copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) registered by it against the news portal NewsClick and granted two weeks time to the ED to file it's reply.

In another development, the Court also sought response of Delhi Police in another plea filed seeking quashing of the case registered by the Economic Offence Wing against the news portal last year.

Reportedly, the Enforcement Directorate had raided the premises of news portal NewsClick and residences of its editors in February this year in connection with money laundering case thereby conducted search and seizure.

The allegations against the petitioner company PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt Ltd is that it had allegedly received foreign direct investment by overvaluing the share to avoid the cap of FDI requirement.

Taking cognizance of the aforesaid FIR, Enforcement Directorate had initiated probe and conducted search operations in connection with the case.

The development came after Justice Singh continued hearing the matters listed before him till 11:30 PM yesterday. Taking up the matter at 10:30PM, the bench had finally concluded hearing in the aforesaid case at 11:15PM.

As part of a Division Bench, Justice Singh started hearing cases at 10:30 am yesterday, after completing which, he started hearing single bench matters at around 3:00 p.m.

Earlier, a division bench of Justices Naveen Chawla and Asha Menon had also heard vacation bench matters till late night on Jun 16.