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…