NEW DELHI, 18 April — The Tehelka expose was a reality waiting to explode. It was to happen sooner or later. With the defense kitty getting bigger every year, it was only a matter of time before the sleaze found its way into the camera of tehelka.com journalists.
Tehelka exploded this bomb not in Pokhran but in a hotel room in Delhi on March 13, but the magnitude of the explosion was big enough to shake the entire country. The tell-tale video exposed the nexus between corrupt politicians, defense officials and the middlemen in arms deals.
The man behind the whole scoop — Tarun Tejpal, editor-in-chief of tehelka.com — is the most sought out person these days in Delhi. Arab News tracked him down to find out about the modus operandi and motivations of the most celebrated sting operation in Indian journalism.
Tarun, however, is matter-of-fact about the entire episode. “Operation West End is just a story for me. We broke the story and our job is over. We have no political patronage, no links with any business houses. All we have done is a good journalistic job,” he says.
Tarun’s life has not changed much after the Tehelka revelations. He is busy in moving on to another scoop. He gives full credit to his colleagues Aniruddha Bahal and Samuel Mathew for blowing the lid off the arms scandal to make our system clean.
Excerpts from an interview with Tarun:
How and when did the idea of video-recording the corrupt politicians and officials strike you?
The story began as a routine story in August of last year. It was Aniruddha Bahal’s idea to investigate the payoffs and corruption in defense contracts. This is an issue that has been haunting Indian politics for the last fifteen years, ever since the Bofors scandal. In 1989 the government banned defense middlemen; and then last year George Fernandes, the then defense minister, claimed that an inquiry had revealed that there were no defense middlemen in India. The truth is that everyone who lives in Delhi knows that the city is full of defense middlemen, who own posh farmhouses and drive opulent cars. So Bahal and Samuel decided to probe this. They formed a dummy company, took a dummy product, and decided to start at the bottom of the food chain, and see how far they could go. The corruption and greed were so enormous that they went right to the very top. The total money given in bribes to various officials, middleman and politicians came to over a million rupees. If we had enough money say five million or 10 million then we could have split open the system.
What about the timing of the cassettes release, whether its release at a time when investigators were closing in on market manipulators, a coincidence or a deliberate one?
The timing of the release of the cassette had only to do with the news imperative. We broke the story within less than 24 hours of it being ready. We did not consult anyone on breaking the story, nor did anyone know of the story till the very morning that we broke it. I got the final edited investigation on the afternoon of March 12. I finished seeing it carefully by late that night. Then I wrote my piece, and went home at 5:00 a.m. that day. Eight hours later, we broke the story at 1.30 in the afternoon, that is on March 13. The story, and its timing, had nothing to do with anything except the practice of journalism.
What is the relationship of Shanker Sharma of First Global with tehelka.com?
First Global are our first round investors. They have absolutely nothing to do with the running of tehelka.com. In fact they had already agreed to sell most of their stake to the second round investors. They also had no idea we were breaking a huge story on defense matters till the morning of March 13. In fact if anything they have suffered a great deal because of their connection with tehelka. Our kind of straight journalism has clearly affected their business interests adversely.
In your first press conference where you released the cassette, other than press people a good number of Congress leaders were present. What does it means?
All kinds of leaders and retired army officers arrived, as well as bureaucrats and media people because the buzz had spread that we were screening an important investigative documentary on defense matters. You must remember Parliament was on, and once word reached there, leaders just began to drive over to see what was being screened. In any case it is to be assumed that any opposition party would have grabbed the opportunity. But as I said at the first press conference and have repeated ad nauseam, we have no affiliations with any political party or business house. Absolutely none at all.
Samuel had reportedly said that you will release more tapes implicating Home Minister L.K. Advani. More so it was said initially that you have tapes which can run up to 80 hours, but only four hours of tapes were released. What is the truth?
Yes we still have the raw unedited tapes that run up to 80 hours. As any journalist will appreciate, there is always far more material than can be finally used for a story. We had worked hard to sift out all the important credible material out of all the field work tapes, which came to more than four hours. Which itself makes for extremely long viewing. The clarification I issued on L.K. Advani had to do with a statement made casually by one of the arms dealers. Yes, we do have it on tape, but had left it out, like many other similar ones, because they constituted loose talk that was not verifiable and also not germane to our story. I didn’t want these guys to sidetrack our main findings and distract from the real story. I had no problems issuing the clarification. This is not an ego issue — its about serious corruption, real evidence and a credible response to the charges.
It is now widely believed that after initial exposure you had some dealing with higher ups in the government particularly with Advani, which resulted in your denial about any such tapes. What do you say?
Absolutely not. We have had no dealings of any sort with any government official or leader.
Are you satisfied with the outcome of your exposure? Don’t you think that the tapes which had initially caused a political earthquake in Delhi, failed to cause any serious political casualty. The Indian media also started downplaying the whole episode from the very next day of it’s release, don’t you think the media particularly the print media is playing a dubious role and is biased?
Yes, and no. I am very disappointed by the government’s response to our investigation. I expected the prime minister to back our efforts, not run them down. How can they claim to be out to nail corruption when every signal they have sent out since the story broke has been to the contrary. On the other hand I think the Indian media has by and large been very very supportive of our story, and virtually every major publication and journalist has supported us strongly. The other most important fallout in my opinion is that corruption has once again become a raging issue in this country. No one had thought that was possible anymore.
What are the legal implications of your tapes? Through a recent amendment in the Indian Evidence Act tape recording and video recording have been accorded legal sanction and are to be taken by courts as primary evidences. But this issue was never raised in any panel discussion. More so in case of Bharat Shah only tape recording was taken into consideration and he was arrested, but why not the same was done in case of Bangaru Laxman and others exposed by tehelka.com?
I think every eminent lawyer who has appeared on television has clarified that not only is this admissible evidence, but in fact it is primary evidence, and the government should have acted on its basis right away. By not doing so I think the government is hurting its credibility a great deal.
Though every body knew about how arms deals are finalized but by showing the whole thing to the nation on television screen, you have done a great service to the nation, there is no doubt about that. But why do you think that your work is over and now the ball is in the court of judiciary, why don’t you pursue it to a logical conclusion?
Well, we are quite sure that we are basically only journalists. As I have said umpteen times, we followed a good story, we got it, and we broke it. We behaved as good journalists, nothing less, nothing more. And that really is where our role begins and ends. I think we will be far more useful if we just continue to practice good journalism, and not turn into full time activists. The story has to be picked up by other sections of public life and carried forward. And I think that is something that is already happening.
