Delhi Police searches homes of 'The Wire' Editors' Siddharth Vardarajan, MK Venu

New Delhi, Oct 31: The Delhi police on Monday searched the homes of two editors of news portal 'The Wire' after a complaint by the BJP's Amit Malviya.

"Delhi Police registered FIR against 'The Wire' after BJP's Amit Malviya's complaint alleging it "forged documents with a view to malign and tarnish my reputation," ANI reported.

"Delhi Police has seized electronic devices (mobiles, laptops) from residences of Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and others. No notice given to anyone and no inquiry has taken place today. Further investigation is going on and necessary steps will be taken," it said.

Malviya had accused news portal 'The Wire' and some unknown persons of entering into a "criminal conspiracy" to tarnish his reputation.

The complaint has been filed with the Special Commissioner of Police, Crime at Police Headquarters in Delhi against 'The Wire' founder Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor Sidharth Bhatia, editor MK Venu, deputy editor and executive news producer Jahnavi Sen, Foundation for Independent Journalism and other unknown persons for the offence punishable under 420, 468, 469, 471, 500 г/w 120B and 34 of the Indian Penal Code.

"This is not the first time the accused has published fake news," he told the special commissioner of Delhi Police (Crime).

Though 'The Wire' has apologised to readers and withdrawn the stories as questions, including from experts, mounted over their veracity, the BJP leader noted that it has refrained from apologising to him despite "maligning and tarnishing my reputation and causing serious harm to my professional career".

Malviya said the Wire's reports alleged the Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) regularly colludes with members of the BJP in removing content deemed unfavourable to the party. The stories claimed that he was allowed to post any content on Instagram without any of its filtration algorithms kicking in.