Statement by Neville Roy Singham on Newsclick funding row

As the Delhi Police named American millionaire Neville Roy Singham as one of the accused in the Newsclick terror case, he has issued a four-page rebuttal, in which he has called the NYT article misleading and innuendo-laden hit piece.

As the Delhi Police named American millionaire Neville Roy Singham as one of the accused in the Newsclick terror case, he has issued a four-page rebuttal, in which he has called the NYT article misleading and innuendo-laden hit piece.

Here is the full text of Mr. Roy’s rebuttal. 

My name is Neville Roy Singham. I founded and led ThoughtWorks Inc., an IT company, for 25 years and sold it in 2017. I have been and remain solely a US citizen since birth. I currently reside in Shanghai (China).

On August 5, 2023, the New York Times (NYT) ran a misleading and innuendo-laden hit piece on me and others that, among other things, provoked a firestorm in India and inflamed the situation regarding the Indian news website portal NewsClick. Twelve days after the publication, on August 17, the Delhi Police Station Special Cell secretly prepared and issued a First Information Report (FIR). Full of defamatory allegations and factual errors, the FIR led to the interrogation of nearly 100 journalists, the detention of dozens, and the eventual arrest of two people on October 3, 2023. After the arrests, the FIR entered the public domain, the release of which is damaging to me and many others. The language used in the FIR strongly suggests that its claims were influenced by misinformation from the NYT article.

India is home to many of the world’s best journalists and writers. It has a vibrant press and media landscape. The news of the arrests and detentions deeply shocked and saddened me.

I am disappointed that this is happening in India, a country close to Sri Lanka, the ancestral home of my father, Archibald W. Singham (1932–1991), a participant in and historian of the Non-Aligned Movement. I write this as someone who dearly loves India, having had a long-standing relationship with the country and its people, from my first visit to Mumbai in 1964, at the age of 11, to the years I spent in the Indian software industry. Beginning in the early 2000s, I spent considerable time in India, opening ThoughtWorks offices across India, including in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, and Hyderabad. Along with many brilliant Indian colleagues, I helped establish many conferences and projects that advanced the Indian software industry. I remain proud that we collectively built world-class, advanced, Agile software development centers in India – the first in the Global South. We successfully highlight the talents of India globally.

The NYT intentionally chose not to publish all the factual rebuttals that I provided to them on July 22, 2023, prior to their publication date. The NYT has done a great disservice to the cause to press freedom. For this reason, I have decided to publicly address some of these points that I raised to, and were ignored by, the NYT. I categorically deny and repudiate all claims of illegality and impropriety and wish to set the record straight.