Raids in India Target Founders of News Outlet Critical of Government
The agency has registered cases against Prannoy and Radhika Roy, a married couple who founded NDTV, in connection with a loss of about
480 million rupees, or nearly $7.5 million, sustained by ICICI, a private bank, said R. K. Gaur, a spokesman for the agency.
The criminal complaint in the Central Bureau of Investigation case, submitted on Friday, three days before the raids, alleges
that the Roys took a loan of around 3.5 billion rupees from ICICI in 2008-9, putting up their shareholdings in the company, at an inflated value, as collateral.
The Roys then paid the bank 3.5 billion rupees a year later, according to the complaint, failing to pay almost 500 million rupees in accrued interest.
By ELLEN BARRYJUNE 5, 2017
NEW DELHI — India’s main investigative agency on Monday raided residences and offices connected to the founders of NDTV, an influential cable TV station
that has had run-ins with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over its news coverage.
NDTV has often reported critically on policies put forward by Mr. Modi’s government,
and frictions have surfaced recently on the air, including a segment in which an anchor asked a spokesman for the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party to apologize for a comment or leave the set.
But NDTV called the raids a politically motivated "witch hunt,"
and journalists for other Indian news outlets cast them as retaliation for the station’s coverage.
N. K. Singh, a former joint director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, said
that it was unusual for the agency to conduct a raid on a media organization and that scrutinizing the terms of a loan by a private bank was also unorthodox.