NEW DELHI (AP) — Police in New Delhi have arrested the editor of a information web site and one in every of its directors after raiding the properties of journalists working for the positioning, which has been crucial of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist-led authorities.

The arrests have been made late Tuesday after some journalists related to NewsClick have been detained and their digital gadgets seized during extensive raids that have been a part of an investigation into whether or not it had acquired funds from China. NewsClick denied any monetary misconduct.

Suman Nalwa, a police spokesperson, mentioned the arrests have been made beneath a wide-ranging anti-terrorism regulation. The authorities has used the regulation to stifle dissent and jail activists, journalists and critics of Modi, with some spending years in jail earlier than going to trial. Those arrested are NewsClick’s founder and editor, Prabir Purkayastha, and its human assets chief, Amit Chakravarty.

Nalwa mentioned at the least 46 individuals have been questioned in the course of the raids and their gadgets, together with laptops and cellphones, and paperwork have been taken away for examination.

They included present and former workers, freelance contributors and cartoonists.

NewsClick was based in 2009 and is seen as a uncommon Indian information outlet prepared to criticize Modi. It was additionally raided by Indian monetary enforcement officers in 2021, after which a court docket blocked the authorities from taking any “coercive measures” towards the web site.

Indian authorities introduced a case towards the positioning and its journalists on Aug. 17, weeks after a New York Times report alleged that it had acquired funds from an American millionaire who had funded the unfold of “Chinese propaganda.”

That identical month, India’s junior minister for info and broadcasting, Anurag Thakur, accused NewsClick of spreading an “anti-India agenda,” citing the New York Times report, and of working with the opposition Indian National Congress celebration. Both NewsClick and the Congress celebration denied the accusations.

Media watchdogs together with the Committee to Protect Journalists denounced the arrests and raids and mentioned they have been a part of an intensifying crackdown on unbiased media beneath Modi.

“This is the latest attack on press freedom in India. We urge the Indian government to immediately cease these actions, as journalists must be allowed to work without fear of intimidation or reprisal,” Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, mentioned in a press release.

The Editors Guild of India mentioned it was apprehensive that the intention of raids was to “create a general atmosphere of intimidation under the shadow of draconian laws.”

In February, authorities searched the BBC’s New Delhi and Mumbai offices over accusations of tax evasion just a few days after it broadcast a documentary in Britain that examined Modi’s function in anti-Muslim riots in 2002.

Numerous different information organizations have additionally been investigated for monetary impropriety beneath Modi’s authorities. Independent media in India battle censorship and harassment and infrequently face arrests whereas doing their work.

India’s anti-terrorism regulation has stringent necessities for bail, which imply people usually spend months, generally years, in custody with out being discovered responsible. Successive Indian governments have invoked the regulation, nevertheless it has been used with growing frequency lately.

Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists, ranked India 161st in its press freedom rankings this yr, writing that the state of affairs has deteriorated from “problematic” to “very bad.”

Some unbiased Indian suppose tanks and worldwide teams similar to Amnesty International and Oxfam India have additionally been raided and had their entry to funding blocked lately.

Journalist Abhisar Sharma, whose home was raided and his digital gadgets seized on Tuesday, mentioned he gained’t again down from doing his job.

“Nothing to fear,” Sharma wrote on X, previously generally known as Twitter. “And I will keep questioning people in power and particularly those who are afraid of simple questions.”

The raids towards NewsClick additionally drew criticism from India’s political opposition.

“These are not the actions of a “mother of democracy” however of an insecure and autocratic state,” opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor wrote on X. “The government has disgraced itself and our democracy today.”