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The French outlet Mediapart has claimed that the BJP is instrumentalising their report on the alleged link between the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) and the US government in order to serve their own political agenda and attack press freedom.
“Mediapart firmly condemns the instrumentalisation of its recently published investigative article about OCCRP by the Bharatiya Janata Party of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in order to serve BJP’s political agenda and attack press freedom,” the outlet's publisher and director Carine Fouteau said in a statement on Sunday.
This comes after the BJP on social media and inside the Parliament quoted a Mediapart article to claim that the Congress, along with the US government and investor George Soros, who the saffron party thinks are part of some over-arching collusion, the 'deep state', which controls world affairs, are trying to destabilise India.
The BJP, in a long thread on X, claimed how the Congress has been citing OCCRP reports to target Prime Minister Modi.
“There are no facts available supporting the conspiracy theory promoted by BJP,” the Mediapart publisher also said in her statement, and expressed her “full support to the courageous Indian and international journalists who report and investigate in India”.
The US government has also taken exception to the BJP's allegations, with their embassy in Delhi saying, "It's disappointing that the ruling party in India would make these kinds of accusations."
"The US government works with independent organisations on programming that supports professional development and capacity building training for journalists. This programming does not influence the editorial decisions or direction of these organisations," the spokesperson further added.
While the BJP quoted Mediapart's article on the US government and OCCRP, they kept mum when netizens attacked the Modi government on Mediapart's reports on alleged corruption involving the Rafale jets deals.
The Mediapart article in the midst of this controversy, titled The hidden links between a giant of investigative journalism and the US government was slammed on X by the editor-in-chief of OCCRP, Miranda Patrucic, who said in a post, "Last week @Mediapart published a defamatory, biased, and factually incorrect story about @OCCRP and our sources of funding. They did so despite numerous exchanges in which we provided them with the facts. Their misguided interpretation has since been spread by other media."