Redemption For Fearless Cowards

Like any other ordinary Indian I am fond of movies. Some of the posts on this site have used movies as analogies or to demonstrate a situation. The best directors and screen writers tell a story amazingly well when the plot is simple or even if there is no plot at all. Something many of our media celebs would do well to learn. For once I will borrow from Nidhi Razdan, and we can look at the “larger picture”.

Aspiration and passion drive people. Passion drives them to live, to fight for justice, to fight for freedom, to power and to greed and corruption. Redemption comes in many different ways. History hangs on tiny chances. On the left is an iconic image of a man who has found liberation and redemption. Heavenly rains clean the shit off his body. At Shawshank everybody is “innocent”, they joke. Everyone, except ‘Red’! He sucks up to the parole board many times but is never allowed parole for a murder he committed as a stupid young teenager. Red had already served 20 years in prison when Andy Dufresne arrives; sentenced for murdering his wife and her lover. Andy is sentenced to two back to back life sentences for each murder (life sentence means “for life” in the US and not 14 years).

It’s a corrupt system, a corrupt prison and headed by an equally corrupt but religious warden who welcomes Andy and his honourable colleagues to prison: “Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank”. Sounds like someone in the news lately, doesn’t it? The ‘man-for-everything’, Red, is “institutionalised”; he grows to the idea of prison. The cold and aloof Andy is a problem-solving banker by profession. He helps the prison staff with their tax returns and saves them money. Being a banker he is also an expert in money laundering and he provides that service gladly to the warden. First Rita Hayworth and then Raquel Welch adorns Andy’s cell. Turns out Raquel revealed more than her sexy poster did. An incident that could have changed his life from prison brings out a profound message from Andy to Red: “Get busy living or get busy dying”. Watch an excerpt (6 mins):

 

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about crime, innocence, friendship, human endurance and redemption. Andy Dufresne didn’t kill anyone; he was wrongly sentenced to prison. The one witness who can establish his innocence arrives at the prison and the warden kills him because that witness would mean the end of his money laundering. Dufresne finally escapes; with all of the 300 thousand dollars of the warden’s money he laundered. Some sort of severance pay for 19 years of wrongful imprisonment. The warden’s safe of loot is covered by a very profound religious quote about the lord: “His judgement cometh and that right soon”. Red finally gets a parole when he stops sucking up and tells the board he doesn’t give a damn. Both friends unite and live a free life in Mexico. The warden shoots himself when his corruptions and crimes are exposed by Andy. “Geology is a study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really. Pressure and time!”.   

Power and passion play a double hand. Power and corruption are also a study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really. Pressure and time! Ask Tarun Tejpal (TT) all about it. The ‘senior’ inmates at Shawshank had a practice of laying bets on the new inmates; on who will crack on the first night in prison. Red spots Andy as a “tall drink of water with the silver spoon up his ass” and places his bet on him to crack. Andy never cracked. At Tehelka some employees are coming out and probably saying “we were all just prisoners here of our own device”. TT may have won his bets in the past but this young 23-year old lady (V) didn’t crack. She stood up for herself and redemption for a “fearless” coward is at hand. Today TT hides in a hole but he’s not the only fearless coward around. If ordinary laymen like me could see the crimes of Tehelka since the first THINK in 2011 and their politically-motivated articles and stings; how is it that his fellow fearless cowards in the media couldn’t see it? Hammam?

There’s Hartosh Singh Bal who was associated with Tehelka at the resurrection in 2004. We shouldn’t forget that resurrection was on personal intervention of Sonia Gandhi. Bal tells Firstpost: “It didn’t last. As soon as funding issues starting cropping up, editorial compromises followed. What happened with my story in the media was in keeping with how events unfolded in the magazine once a fund crunch hit the organisation. I witnessed stories in other departments being killed after advertisers came and directly spoke to Tarun. And I had seen attempts made to slant political coverage not out of commitment to a certain set of values, but out of an obligation to a particular political party”. Any surprise why the Congis are very upset and will go all out to protect TT? They are behaving as if one of their own was caught in a sting operation. V only happens to be the latest but a courageous victim. What about others earlier?

There’s Sayeema Sahar, formerly of StarNews (now ABPNews). She claims to be sexually harassed by the bosses at StarNews (Avinash Pandey and Gautam Sharma). On protesting she was harassed and finally thrown out of the company it seems. Her complaints went unheard and even the “we-cry-for-all-women” NCW did not respond to her complaints. The NCW did nothing. Sahar is a Muslim woman but she hasn’t claimed being harassed because of that. Maybe she made a mistake. Maybe if she claimed she was harassed because she was a “woman and a Muslim” she would have got the attention of the NCW, the Congress, Minorities Commission, the AIMPLB, Digvijaya Singh, the Babri Committee, Teesta Setalvad, Barkha Dutt, Mulayam Singh, Nitish Kumar, Vrinda Grover and Javed “SAAB”. NOTHING! She was just thrown out and no one still wants to talk about it. I believe both Avinash Pandey and Gautam Sharma should be questioned by the NCW and the Police. Sayeema was pregnant when she was thrown out of the company after being harassed. (Read here, here, here, here).

Then there is another case at AAJTak. A letter from Rukmini Sen (read here) to Aroon Purie, the plagiarist-head of IndiaToday group, makes astonishing reading. She claims harassment but even as she is quitting her boss has odd questions on her reasons for leaving: “So Are you leaving this job for that man? Where does he live? Oh I know because you changed your FB status! Why are you in a long distance relationship? Will you marry him? Boyfriend waala maamla bekaar hai. Oh but I am sure you have many boyfriends. Which number is this one? Will you never get married? Live like this? with many”? I wonder if this boss wanted to discuss her resignation or write the story for some movie of a multiple-boyfriend heroine. Why don’t the grand pontificators of media like Rajdeep, Barkha, Swapan, Rahul Kanwal notice? What did they do about this? These editors are prisoners of their own selfish, greedy devices. Everybody is “innocent” at Shawshank. Let’s hear a sermon from Numero Uno Rajdeep Sardesai:

Imagine CNN-IBN without Rajdeep. Imagine TimesNow without Arnab. Almost every channel has promoted a personality cult rather than the news organisation. Yes, it is good to have stars but dangerous to allow them to grow so big that the organisation’s survival is put at stake with them. TT reflects the disease with most media outlets. NDTV’s credibility has been permanently damaged with Barkha Dutt’s Radiagate episode. Rajdeep is 3 years late. Here’s what I wrote when I responded to her self-righteous and shrill protests in her self-defence:

“Barkha is also extremely fortunate that NDTV has chosen to respond to this expose in her support. Does it mean the conversations Barkha was having with Nira Radia was approved by or in knowledge of NDTV? Any major organisation would have typically stated that the conversation Barkha was having was in her “individual and private” capacity. This is also a warning for all media channels not to have their brand names be so heavily associated with "personalities". A media channel needs to be bigger than personalities. Else, one flawed celebrity would be enough to bring the house down”.

Following the TT scandal everyone is now talking about the trail of Tehelka’s finances and the maze of its funding. Why now? Where were Indian Express, TOI, India Today and the latest FirstPost and many others hiding all this while? Even prominent columnists are now left in a quandary over their silence. The culture of vague and ambiguous writing must now come to an end. Honest journalism requires writing with names of offenders and not innuendos. The media is still shielding the former SC judge who has been recently accused of sexual harassment by two interns. Rajdeep did wonder why it takes outsiders to write our story (The Siege 26/11) but he doesn’t want to even talk or write about stuff that is so easily in front of him and doesn’t even need any great investigation or huge research. The extortion and blackmail tactics of Tehelka were visible since 2011 (and probably earlier). And how much cash has flowed into Tehelka from dubious sources is anybody’s guess. Take a look at the sponsors of KINK2013:

There’s BHEL, a PSU, there’s DLF whose chairman calls bribes as “payment for speeding up” service, there’s govt departments like Maharashtra and Kerala Tourism (in Goa??) There’s RIICO, the industry promotion organisation of Rajasthan. Every media celeb knew how Tejpal & Co. got their funds and how their severe loss-making magazine survived. It’s more like an under-hand “Ponzi scheme” without the promise of returns. Why would anyone believe that many other media houses are any different? Tehelka wasn’t paying salaries for months while the top management was enriching itself. Exceptional greed for power and wealth!

NDTV isn’t done with their “Hammam” behaviour. Shoma was their “darling” frequent flier on their panels and NDTV’s “victims” being part of Tejpal’s corruption-ridden THINK escapades. The filthy minds at NDTV pour nonsense into the public domain. Here’s a tweet by their ‘Social Network’ crap which discusses “Voyeurs” of the Aarushi & V case. I do not recall anyone slandering Aarushi or V on SM. If there is a stray moron it is probably from NDTV itself. After all, these are the poisonous channels that got psychologists on their panels to discuss the “sexual habits” of teens because 14-year old Aarushi was allegedly having an affair with the family’s domestic hand. How sick are these people? When Shoma resigned today, their “Ethics” head Sonia Singh tweets another silly message. Sonia doesn’t realise that people aren’t delighted at just about “someone” falling. They are delighted a corrupt bunch of people and a corrupt media house is falling. It doesn’t occur to her that TT, Shoma & Co. as a group enjoyed a perverted thrill at entrapping people with stings and then gleefully celebrating their fall. Till their last day they were plotting the fall of “one” man. Unfortunately for them, fate and justice exposed their slimy character. Bad luck for NDTV!

A word about the “The Shawshank Redemption”: As with injustice in life the movie was nominated for 7 Oscars but went without a single one. A lesser movie like ‘Forrest Gump’ won a few. Shawshank has touched people across the world so deeply that since its release in 1994 it has permanently remained in the Top-10 of many charts of popular movies with viewers. Even this week it remains the No.1 choice of best movie of all time with viewers on the IMDB list. Knowing his fate after being exposed, the warden at Shawshank kills himself. Red observes: “I'd like to think that the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet, was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him”. TT must be similarly wondering in his own literary style: “How the hell did a 23-year old chit of a girl get the better of a crook like me”. Tejpal isn’t the only one in trouble. The consciences of many others have been rattled too.

“Andy Dufresne crawled through a river of shit and came out clean”. V came out clean from the shit in the lifts at the Grand Hyatt. Tejpal and Shoma crawled through a different river of shit and didn’t come out clean. They ended up in an “ocean of shit’. Andy didn’t destroy just the warden; he destroyed the entire corrupt prison system. V didn’t destroy just Tejpal, Shoma or Tehelka; she has destroyed whatever credibility was left of the MSM. Many major media houses are a Shawshank with “prisoners of their own device” and corrupt wardens and innocent victims. It’s time the fearless cowards changed their ways. 

26/11 The Siege - All Pain, Nothing Gained

Many may have seen disaster movies like ‘The Poseidon’ ( a remake of ‘The Poseidon adventure’) or ‘The towering inferno’ or the Indian disaster movie ‘The burning train’. The common theme in these and similar disaster movies is people from different backgrounds with different stories coming together at a party or a journey. Newlyweds, old parents visiting, honeymooners, rich men and women come to throw their money around, politicians, criminals, long lost friends, relatives meeting up again and, of course, the staff. Then disaster strikes by accident or design and then the story is about how each of the characters react, cling to life, make up for their sins, value relationships again. Some die, some are saved. There are heroes and there are bums.

One of my least read posts is “Indian media’s top 5 prayers”. Although the prayers-list is not exhaustive it serves as a guide for me on the behavioural patterns of our media celebs and reporters. Their biggest excitement seems to come from the answer to one of these prayers. Anchors rush to courts like the Aarushi-verdict or to the Phailin cyclone spots in Orissa. They rush to terror-incident spots like on 26/11. Once the event or tragedy is over they return to the studios and blabber with assorted morons but don’t dig deeper into the incidents and tragedies. The Uttarakhand story was forgotten in just a few days. They don’t like that part of the job (The only story they seem to remember in the last 1786 years is Gujarat 2002). And then Rajdeep Sardesai asks the dumb question why it takes an outsider. I had to rap Numero Uno with the reply that Indian media celebs warm their bottoms in studios. Researching and writing requires getting out and doing some honest journalism. It requires patience and the urge to seek the truth. It requires waiting outside offices and standing in lines; something people like Rajdeep and his ‘Hammam’ aren’t used to. This is why foreigners with an obsession do that job.

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark released their book “The Siege” about 26/11  a month back and it was discussed widely in the media. The authors have traced the people, their backgrounds, their deaths and their lives. The book is written through a timeline of those who became victims of the terrorist attack at multiple spots but particularly The Taj hotel. As in the disaster movies I mentioned, the authors bring in the characters from different backgrounds and different purposes and how they lived through hell for 3 nights and 3 days. 166 of them did not make it. It is not a ring-side view of the tragedy. It is a view from ‘inside’ the ring from those who shared the suffering. These include people who were acting to counter the attack; the Police and the NSG. There is no happy ending.

We’re all gonna die someday. Death is a certain uncertainty or an uncertain certainty. Most of us would like to choose how we die. It is impossible for those who weren’t inside the ring to feel what they felt or experience it. We may try but not even be able to understand their experience. We can empathise or sympathise with their suffering and their loss. Here’s a clip that might help understanding what it feels to be inside (Video 35 seconds):

There are two guys waving some shirt or garment as a distress flag in the clip above; one jumps off the building. There’s a woman feeling the heat of being burned. The book by Levy and Scott-Clark is written like a script to one of those disaster movies. There aren’t too many great revelations but it is more of a human story rather than a terror and intrigue story. Here are some selective passages from the book that I thought make important reading on what happened. The references in brackets at the end of each quote are from the paperback edition.

Quote:

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26/11 - About thoughts and actions of Rakesh Maria (JC) who had handled the 1993 blasts case:

Fidayeen rules were in play. They learn and adapt. We stagnate, squabble and steal from one another. Maria wondered if this force of 40,000, protecting a city of 13 million – well below the UN recommended minimum – was even capable of getting a grip on the crisis… At 22.40 he made an entry in the Control Room diary: “I have spoken to the Chief Secretary. We need the National Security Guard or the army to help us deal with this. This was the state’s call and it was still dithering. Then Maria had a 1993 moment. This felt like a nation waging war against Mumbai and in Maria’s opinion Pakistan was the obvious candidate. (Ch.3, Pg. 85)

27/11 - About thoughts of  JC Rajvardhan, one of the first to be at the site at Taj:

The JC made himself a wager: there would no inquiry worth its salt. This was not UK or the US, where a powerful commission would bear down on every institution. The establishment would thwart any such investigation. No one would put their head above the parapet and afterwards the old, inefficient, corrupt regime would continue to rule the roost. (Ch.7, Pg. 195)

27/11 - Mike Pollack, a foreigner, observes:

All around him mobile phone screens glowed in the darkness. Some of the conversations made him feel like his teeth were getting drilled, including that of an Indian MP, who seemed to be giving a live TV interview. ‘We are in a special part of the hotel on the first floor called the Chambers. There are more than 200 important people: business leaders and foreigners’. Pollack whispered to Anjali: ‘Can you believe it? This f*****g idiot MP is blabbering our exact locations to CNN or something’. Friends in the US began texting to say that the Indian MP’s interview already being reported. A siege had just become something far more deadly. (Ch. 7, Pg. 209)

Authors: Afterword on examining police records in Mumbai:

But once we had begun trawling through the evidence the opposite seemed true. While the 9/11 commission of inquiry in the United States enlisted a ten-man bi-partisan board of politicians to probe every facet of the attacks, and the 7/7 inquiries in London spent six months recording every detail and witness statement, 26/11 received only a cursory grilling from the Pradhan Commission, a two-man panel formed in Mumbai on 30 December 2008 to explore the ‘war-like’ attacks on the city… Pradhan exonerated Mumbai’s police force, although it did accuse Police Commissioner Hassan Gafoor of failing to be visible. Even these weak words were rejected by the state legislature. Gafoor, who responded by blaming other senior officers for the mistakes of 26/11, died of a heart attack in Breach Candy hospital in 2012, by which time the majority of the Pradhan Commission’s recommendations to better detect future attacks (and thwart them) had still not been implemented. (Pg. 278)

Authors: Afterword on the govt delays:

The Black Cats created a forensic account of every minute wasted and submitted it to the Home Ministry. It is an astonishing document that still makes soldiers angry and details how a combined task force was unofficially mobilized at 10.05pm on Wednesday, 26 November 2008, just twenty two minutes after the first shots were fired in Leopold’s. By 10.30 pm , the Black Cats were ready to deploy to the technical area of Palam airstrip, but it would take another seventy minutes for the Cabinet Secretary, the highest civil servant in the land, to contact the NSG chief, Jyoti Dutt, warning of a mobilization without giving the go-ahead or revealing transport arrangements. (Pg. 284)

Authors: Afterword on Black Cats (NSG):

From Delhi it took more than two and a half flying hours to reach most other cities. The NSG proposed creating four regional hubs, but the proposals went unanswered. So did a second report advising the ministry that the Black Cats were ‘limping along’ because of corruption and lethargy in procurement. Presently the men were ‘woefully ill-equipped’. Applications for lightweight boots, Kevlar helmets and modern body armour, as well as hands-free communications sets, were in limbo. They were short of high-powered thermal-imaging units; their lightweight ladders dated from 1985; and they had no useable night vision devices, with one ministry official conceding that the NSG was ‘as good as blind’ and ‘could only work efficiently during daylight’. When the Black Cats flew into Mumbai it was a triumph of men over machinery, chief Dutt reflected to us. (Pg. 286)

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Unquote.

  

Quoting any more would be a dis-service to the authors. Do remember there was someone in Delhi in the corridors of govt who is reported to have fed information to the ISI and who has been given the codename “Honeybee” by the authors. This Honeybee had probably relayed all the holes and weaknesses in our defences that the authors cite to the handlers of the terrorists. The authors mention the Indian media’s poor reportage and feeding terrorists only mildly. It doesn’t take a wizard to know the ISI and Pakistan were behind the attacks. Even the ‘Dehati Aurat’ knows that. The govt’s response and subsequent measures to counter terrorism doesn’t demand much to applaud. The terrorists are not only from across the border but also within our land; in sleeper cells, various govts and, particularly, in the media. Even our counter-terror policies are dictated by religion and “Sickularism” and not by security concerns for the people and the country. Nothing has been learned.

Rajdeep’s tweet was ignorant hypocrisy but he means well. He sometimes thinks better when he is off TV. He is not entirely accurate, though, when he says there are no Indian writers and researchers who write “our” story. There are some who wrote some articles claiming “revelations” about 26/11 (Like a Scumbagini from Tehelka who wrote a grand conspiracy which the rag quietly deleted later because it was as spurious as Tarun Tejpal) and there is at least one who researched very deep and came up with an answer to who was behind the whole attack on Mumbai and India. You see, the Hindus are upset that India has progressed far ahead of Pakistan. They are upset that we are still a democracy. They are upset that the Taj Hotel, an architectural beauty, is still standing. The Hindus want to destroy it all. That is what one moron called Aziz Burney tried to imply in the very Indian book “26/11 – An RSS Conspiracy”. And there is the Congress “Liar-in-Chief” Digvijaya Singh, of the Congress party, approving and releasing the book at a function. Alongside him are scumbags like Mahesh Bhatt whose son, Rahul Bhatt, was one of the bimbos exploited by David Headley.

In “The Siege” the authors narrate how Uncle Zaki (of LeT) tells the terror recruits who were to attack Mumbai how India has progressed at the cost of Muslims. How Muslims in India and Pakistan are suffering and their condition must be avenged to please Allah. That when the recruits die their faces will glow, they will have made Allah happy and they will go to paradise. Welcome to hell, this IS paradise! There have been many terror attacks since 26/11 and the Indian govt has shown no inclination whatsoever to hound and clean up terrorist sleeper cells. The Home Minister writes to CMs not to arrest Muslims. Of course, the morons will keep telling you terror has no religion. And when leaders and ordinary people withstand these terror attacks they call it a conspiracy too (Miracle at Gandhi Maidan). As long as terror sympathisers are within our land there will be a bigger 26/11 attempted. There’s nothing learned; all pain and no gain.

The Beast's Accomplices

There are three kinds of sting operations: 1) An authorised Law Enforcement agency like the Police or CBI conducts a sting to make inroads into a crime already committed to force evidence. 2) Lure innocent people into believing or playing roles to con someone or commit a major crime. You know like that Special26 movie about the jewellery shop robbery in 1987 where the conman recruited people as CBI agents to rob the outlet. 3) Fabricate a crime with some political or other motive and then try to fit people into it. Catch them unawares by appealing to their baser instincts and tempt them into a crime.

 

The recent sting on the AAP Party falls into the third category. Try to appeal to baser instincts of people (and it is normal for a large number of people who can succumb to temptation) and then claim they are guilty. Tehelka’s history is full of the third category. In other words, these are not even stings but more of entrapments. Tarun Tejpal (TT) couldn’t help molesting and raping a young colleague twice at a public event (Remember NDTV, please insert alleged everywhere). Imagine what crimes he would have succumbed to if offered inducements with call girls or prostitutes. Take a look at the pic below:

Not hard to recognise the man in the middle, is it? In 2009 Tiger Woods was hospitalised and the media was trying to find out why. Then came news that there was an accident and he suffered some serious injuries. People were worried. Then came news that the injuries were out of his wife beating him up. Then came news that the beating was because of his adultery and affair with another woman. That should have explained. It didn’t stop there. Then came news of three more women. Then another three! By the time the shock could be absorbed it turns out Woods had rounded up a complete “cricket team” of girlfriends with whom he had affairs. He even added a 12th woman to complete the bench; there were 12 women in all. But even the high-octane-libido-Woods wasn’t accused of raping or forcing any woman into sex with him. Tejpal’s daughter claims to have told “V” (his victim) that her dad had done this before. So I wonder how many will tumble out of his closet and speak up with the same courage as V.

Are we to believe that people around Tiger Woods and many of his media chroniclers didn’t know about his sexcapades? I don’t thinks so. Are we to believe all the friends of TT in the media didn’t know about his sexcapades? I don’t think so in his case either. Every major media celeb in NDTV, CNN-IBN, TimesNow, India Today, TOI Group, Mid-day, FirstPost and all the cronies in and around Delhi and Mumbai would have known about his history sheet. They remained quiet. They were all silent accomplices. Chances are they are still accomplices to some other crooks like TT. In particular, would Shoma Chaudhury be unaware? Facts tell us she would be. After all, Tehelka was a small family and not a giant like TOI. Shoma now comes across the scumbagini who’s the biggest accomplice in terms of attempts to cover up of the whole episode. This is the same Shoma who is quoted in Wiki (Pic from DailyMail):  

Chaudhary criticises the current state of the Indian media. Speaking on a panel on investigative journalism at the 16th World Editors Forum, she remarked on the state of journalism in India as "pathetic" as it had become "a corporate rather than a political act". She was critical of the "focus on advertisement revenue" rather than public interest, adding that "journalism has thus been undervalued, and this needs to change”. On another occasion she was quoted as saying: “India's political, corporate and media establishment sounds like a mobile cocktail party, gliding, champagne glasses in hand, in and out of each other’s drawing rooms, television studios, boardrooms and award ceremonies like actors in an elaborate charade”.

That last quote seems to pretty much describe Tehelka itself. Surprising see doesn’t see Tehelka’s ugly face in the mirror. “Drunken banter” said Tejpal to his victim. Mobile cocktail party? That’s what most media houses in Delhi are and they are part of the Scotch-circuit of Delhi and Mumbai. The cocktails by themselves shouldn’t bother us but it’s the kind of ‘Hammam’ and incestuous club it has created that has destroyed the credibility of MSM. There isn’t one single media house that is clean. All of them protect each other’s crimes. All of them protect each other’s rapes, molestations, corruptions and frauds. There is a reason I fondly call them a “mafia”. The earlier tagline for this blog was “Crooks & Liars in the Indian media are the greatest danger to our democracy”. It’s not the middle and junior, it’s the top rung that is usually corrupt and dangerous. The bottle-neck is always at the top. It is only when it’s too late that some speak out. Most of the media houses are scavenging on the death of Tehelka and are guilty of gross negligence all this while. They’re like a “mafia wife”. But there are some who acted out of courage, some whose voices never reached you earlier, spoke out. Here are two former employees of Tehelka (Video: 6.00 mins):

 

Revati Lal resigned after the murky handling and cover up attempts by Shoma. It’s a courageous decision. Prithi Sen not only confirms the misdeeds but seems to have been a victim herself and was effectively told ‘put up or shut up’. Prithi must have just decided to leave. Surprisingly, Prithi was on the lesser viewed NewsX channel and not on the other real mafia channels (unless I’ve missed something). Prithi makes a very important point about TT’s fraudulent claim of “consensual sex” as he blames the victim and calls her a liar. She rightly points out that even if, hypothetically, the girl had made the advances it should have been the job of TT to discourage her and ask her to behave. V’s letter to Shoma after the horrible incidents are in the public domain and her account of the sequence of events don’t leave much doubt about who the criminal here is. Tejpal and Shoma don’t seem to realise that they have not only destroyed themselves but the lives and careers of others. Employees had invested their trust, their time and their careers in the hands of TT and Shoma. Tehelka is dead! The innocent ones will have to seek careers elsewhere. I hope they find better ones at better places.

That brings us to the other accomplices to the crimes of Tehelka and the two bosses. These are the ones who claim to have known TT for long and even as a “dear friend”. Here’s the Category5Moron with her story:

Those were Sagarika’s initial tweets after the rape incident became public. Do you really believe she didn’t know what had happened? Seriously, she cries for TT and claims he’s a loving, generous friend and being in the media and ‘gossip-circuit’ heard nothing? Never mind! 

What are first reactions? It wasn’t of any shock or outrage that you would expect from her had such an incident happened in some other event. All that comes out is that she is more sorrowful for Tejpal than for the victim. A bit later (bottom left tweet) she manages to applaud the victim for her courage. Oh and “many of us have suffered, were scared to speak” in the past? Who is us? Has Sagarika suffered? If so, is she referring to her past employers at Outlook or some other outlet? What stops her from speaking now? Inconsolable in her tears, she manages to demonstrate she’s a Royal Bimbo by connecting the “snooping” incident to the rape incident. How moronic can you get? So somehow curse “Modi Bhakts” because her dear friend turned out to be a rapist. She doesn’t fool me by pretending she didn’t know TT’s history. Does she fool you? Here’s Sonia Singh of NDTV:

I haven’t seen Sonia Singh blabbering too much on any topic even if she’s accused of bias being a Congi’s wife. That should never matter in anyone’s consideration of what she says or does. But she goofs up here. I disagree with her contention that publishing the notes of the victim in a paper is the reason why women are scared to come out. Far from that I think the more women speak out and publish the more the fear will dissipate. What Sonia should wonder about is something else. If I recall correctly, she was elevated as the Head of the Ethics Committee of NDTV when the Sunetra Chaudhury incident happened. What did NDTV do? Maybe NDTV did something and got an apology or compensation and settled the issue. We don’t know.

Has Sonia ever asked why when NDTV has a website Sunetra had to write about her humiliation in another newspaper (DNA)? Isn’t that odd? Sunetra also wrote that despite the incident she had to attend a presser of the culprit which quite scared her. It is just that Sunetra didn’t name the crook while in V’s case the name was out on Social Media already. Had it not been for SM TT’s latest would have been buried too. Other than that I don’t see any difference between Sunetra publishing or V’s letter being published. This doesn’t occur to Sonia or others who are making similar comments. I have mentioned in the previous post that maybe if the Sunetra incident had been blown up it could have prevented TT and maybe other crimes. NDTV, therefore, is a moral accomplice to these crimes.

That then brings us to other accomplices who are suddenly discovering Tehelka. All this past decade none in the media asked a simple question: How did Tehelka get so rich? How is it that despite consistent losses TT got so rich? How did he get to buy prized real estate in Goa? How is it that Tehelka was able to get funds for events like THINK and KINK. Nothing of Tehelka’s sales or ad revenues would point to such massive funds. I say KINK because TT is reported to have famously told delegates: They were in Goa “so they could eat, drink, be merry and sleep with whomever you want". Does Goa lend itself to that reputation or is it TT’s personal lifestyle? The fund-grabbing for 2011 included arm-twisting of the then Goa CM Digambar Kamat based on a little help from friend Ahmed Patel. Yeah; the guy who monitors Sonia Gandhi’s happiness and unhappiness meter!

Anant Media is the owner of Tehelka. Here’s what ET reports: For the fiscal ended March 31, 2012, Anant media posted a loss of 10.5 crore, down from a loss of 16 crore the previous year. Royal Building and Infrastructure, the Alchemist group company, extended an unsecured loan of Rs19 crore to Anant Media during the fiscal ended 31 March 2012. KD Singh has been in the news for his brush with the law on two occasions in the recent past. In 2011, he was intercepted at New Delhi airport carrying an unspecified but large amount of cash. He was boarding a flight to Assam, where assembly polls were due and Trinamool Congress was contesting…airport officials allowed him to travel after he identified himself as an employee of the Alchemist group… SEBI barred Alchemist Holdings from accepting deposits from the public. It held that Alchemist Holdings and Alchemist Infra Realty Ltd had together raised more than 1,400 crore in illicit schemes… In 2012, the government had ordered a probe by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office into Alchemist group companies.

So a majority of the investment is from realty companies. They even extend an unsecured loan of 19 crores against accumulated losses of 26 crores in the previous two years to Tehelka. Sound business sense, eh? Of course, we don’t know what the accumulated losses were before that. How does a small rag, tag and bobtail outfit like Tehelka make such losses? Where does the money go? An investigation into the personal finances and assets of TT and Shoma should answer that. A thorough investigation into the personal assets and finances of many media celebs would reveal a lot. This was the company that was broke and had to be resurrected with the intervention of Sonia Gandhi. Hindustan Times narrates a similar story.

Mumbai Mirror goes further into the murky dealings of TT. This includes the sacking of a man who was about to expose a major mining scam in Goa. It seems TT fired him to bargain funds for THINK2011. The Grand Hyatt, where KINK2013 and the rape happened, is reportedly owned by a beneficiary of the suppressed scams. It goes further about TT: “He was also getting a seedy reputation for talking loosely about the sex lives of people he knew and for brushing aside sexual harassment complaints. One of his former colleagues, who quit journalism after an incident in which the Tejpal-Chaudhury duo played a questionable role, remembers the indifference with which he treated her sexual harassment complaint against a colleague who had circulated pictures of her exposed midriff all around the office”. All this corruption and ‘poison-power’ flows from only one fountain: The Congotri of corruption. History hangs on tiny chances. Ask TT to tell you about it someday.

They were all accomplices. One way or another they covered up the crimes and excesses of the beast. After all, which media house doesn’t have similar stories? That Tehelka will die isn’t of much consequence to me. It’s the kind of the third-rate journalism and dishonourable practices it employed that should really die. Excessive corruption, illicit wealth and the wine of ‘69 drives many of our media celebs. I’m naturally reminded of some lines from a song that describes this culture pretty well.

Her mind is Tiffany twisted/ She got the Mercedes bends/ She got a lot of pretty pretty boys/ She calls friends… Mirrors on the ceiling/ Pink champagne on ice/ And she said, “We are all just prisoners here of our own device”/ And in their master’s chambers/ They had gathered for the feast/ They stab it with their steely knives/ But they just can’t kill the beast…