Delhi police last week told a Delhi court that they were investigating alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) by Alt News in their investigation into co-founder Mohammed Zubair.

In a statement posted to his Twitter account, Harshil Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, said the payment gateway shared “only certain data” with investigating authorities as part of the investigation.

“While I am not permitted to share the details due to the ongoing investigation, I would like to note that the subject company was only authorized to receive domestic payments under our policy of disallowing international transactions without FCRA approval for donation sites,” he said , without naming Alt News directly.

Concerned about the data Razorpay may have shared, he said the specific scope of the investigative authorities’ request was just to determine whether there were foreign donations.

“And therefore the donors’ PAN, address, PIN code, etc. were not shared, which we felt was outside the scope of the investigation,” he said.

The investigation into Alt News’ payments follows Zubair’s arrest over a complaint from a Twitter account that said he offended Hindus in 2018 by posting a frame from an old Hindi film.

Responding to Alt News that they were not contacted before the information was shared, Mathur said Razorpay reached the company’s registered cell phone numbers but was unable to reach them.

“In hindsight, we understand that it may have been difficult for them to call in a situation like this and we could have tried to find other channels,” he said.
Providing details, he said the firm received a written notice of transaction data for a specific period on Monday.

“We immediately contacted the authorities to understand the scope and reasons for the request. A senior Razorpay head has traveled to Delhi from Bengaluru to speak with the authorities,” he said. “As our process is, we have consulted several legal experts and agree that we must comply with the request.”

Razorpay has temporarily disabled Alt News’ business account for clarity on the purpose of the investigation to protect and prevent consumer losses, he said. “Once we had that clarity, we immediately re-enabled payments for them.” He also said that policy experts and legal advisers across the country were unanimous in the need for Razorpay to comply with the legal request.

“We have always championed the need for a proper privacy law in the country,” he said. “We’re not perfect, for anyone who feels we could have done something else, my DMs are always open, please give us feedback.”