New Delhi: Six years after the Delhi police opened an investigation into alleged financial fraud against Newsclick and its editor Prabir Purkayastha, the Delhi high court last month held the case untenable, saying that allowing the investigations to proceed would amount to a “gross abuse of the process of law”.The case stemmed from an FIR registered by the Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing in August 2020. Within days, the ED opened its own money-laundering investigation based on the FIR, alleging malpractice in funds received by Newsclick from abroad. In 2021, the agency conducted raids on Purkayastha’s home and the news portal’s office, alleging violations of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).On May 29 this year, Delhi high court Justice Neena Bansal Krishna quashed both the police FIR and the ED’s case. The judgement was made publicly available on June 10. Read more about the case here.In an email interview, Purkayastha spoke to The Wire about his time in prison, his goals, the challenges facing young journalists and more. Edited excerpts follow.You were imprisoned during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency as well as under what some commentators have described as an ‘undeclared Emergency’. Can you talk about both the instances, the similarities and the differences?Let us start with the dissimilarities. At that time, we did not know when the Emergency would end, or if it would end at all. Had India transitioned, as many other newly independent countries had, to an authoritarian regime? As you know, the legal position after the (in)famous Supreme Court judgement in 1976 – known as ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla – was that our fundamental rights were guaranteed in the Constitution, but they could not be enforced. The uncertainty of not knowing when either the emergency or our custody would end broke many people. This time, we could approach the courts, and though the process is constrained by draconian laws such as Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, judicial remedies still exist. We could approach the courts, and that gave us hope. The flip side is that, under the law, we are no longer political prisoners as we were during the earlier emergency. As far as the system is concerned, we are “undertrials” like any other person charged with a crime. Except that the laws under which we were charged were serious offences. Unlike earlier, when our families could meet us more easily, the process of getting mulakaats, as well as the mulakaats themselves, was harder on the families. Could you talk about incidents from your time in prison that have stayed with you?I do not want to use this interview to write my memoir! What stays with me is the resilience of the people in jail as well as the human costs that any such incarceration extracts. It tests people in ways that they perhaps have never prepared for. As a fellow prisoner said to me – at the end of the day, we would like to emerge with our self-respect intact.Did the experience change your understanding of solidarity within the media fraternity? Were there people who stood by you in unexpected ways, or maybe others who remained silent when you expected support?Again, for my memoirs! As I have said above, all such “emergencies”, big or small, test all those who come under the state’s attention. Ultimately, society and perhaps history judge what you did, not when things are normal, but when they are not. In what ways has daily life permanently changed for you since the 2023 arrest?A lot more time has to be spent on handling the consequences of the 2021 ED raid and its aftermath as well as the 2023 arrest. A lot more time goes into addressing legal cases and other proceedings, which I would have liked to spend on more productive pursuits.Looking back over your political journey, is there a belief or conviction you held very strongly in your youth that experience eventually forced you to reconsider? And conversely, is there something you once dismissed but came to appreciate with time?Again, a question for my autobiography. I have to grant that your questions will make my future task on this easier! In brief, I have a very simple outlook on life. Spend time working out what you believe in, but do not start re-examining your beliefs every day. Broadly, I believe all of us have a responsibility towards society, for which we have to act within the constraints of society and laws. What would you say to young people who still want to enter journalism despite the shrinking space for independent media and the risks involved today?I think youth today know what they want and have the tools to work toward their goals. Just as some spaces may be shrinking, but new spaces are also opening up. The challenge is for us older folks to understand what the youth need from us without giving them lectures on how we have fought in the past and what we think they should do. Yes, we can share our experience and why we did what we did, and they can then decide for themselves what is useful for them. Or not! Humour is an important part of political resistance. In the midst of raids, court cases and imprisonment, how have you kept your sense of humour and optimism alive?I think in the earlier emergency, one of my older fellow detainees had said, “You can either smile and resist or cry and resist. Your choice!” Even then, I preferred humour and optimism as a superior option. And as I have said earlier, once you have made these life choices, it’s best not to reexamine them time and again. Saves a lot of time and angst!