Raids in India Target Founders of News Outlet Critical of Government<br />The agency has registered cases against Prannoy and Radhika Roy, a married couple who founded NDTV, in connection with a loss of about<br />480 million rupees, or nearly $7.5 million, sustained by ICICI, a private bank, said R. K. Gaur, a spokesman for the agency.<br />The criminal complaint in the Central Bureau of Investigation case, submitted on Friday, three days before the raids, alleges<br />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.<br />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.<br />By ELLEN BARRYJUNE 5, 2017<br />NEW DELHI — India’s main investigative agency on Monday raided residences and offices connected to the founders of NDTV, an influential cable TV station<br />that has had run-ins with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over its news coverage.<br />NDTV has often reported critically on policies put forward by Mr. Modi’s government,<br />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.<br />But NDTV called the raids a politically motivated "witch hunt,"<br />and journalists for other Indian news outlets cast them as retaliation for the station’s coverage.<br />N. K. Singh, a former joint director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, said<br />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.
