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TITLE: Probing Website Snares High and Mighty |
AUTHOR: Peter Popham |
PUB: New Zealand Herald |
DATE: March 18, 2001 |
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The man who detonated the biggest explosion Indian politics has seen for years sits in his cool, minimalist rooftop office in a crumbling Delhi suburb, ruminating on how easy it all was. "Our two reporters knew next to nothing about finance or defence equipment," says Tarun Tejpal, editor-in-chief of Tehelka.com, the Indian website that filmed Indian politicians and military top brass accepting bribes from a fictitious arms company called West End. "We thought we would start from the bottom of the food chain and work our way up. We were expecting at any moment to have our cover blown, but we were just pulled up the ladder by all the guys above waiting to get their hands on the money. These deals are just such a routine thing." The story of how a raw young investigative website with 40 journalists on its payroll has shaken the Indian Government to its foundations is both inspiring and depressing: inspiring for what it tells of the guts and ambition of India's young journalists, taking web journalism into areas it has not penetrated anywhere in the world before; grimly depressing for India's electorate, who believed that by voting in the Bharatiya Janata Party three years ago they were getting something different from the corrupt old Congress party. They now find you could not slide a cigarette paper between the parties. A tall, lean figure with a trim salt and pepper beard, Tejpal worked for 20 years in print journalism, which he says is "still my first love," before launching Tehelka last summer. The poster behind his desk advertises the new company's first sensational splash: 'FALLEN HEROES: The Inside Story of a Nation Betrayed.' In his previous job on the weekly magazine Outlook, Tejpal broke the story of match-fixing in Indian cricket. He equipped the man who broke ranks to give him that story, former Indian cricketer Manoj Prabhakar, with a spy camera and a tape recorder and sent him to talk to his former cronies and lure them into spilling the beans about the sleazy world of Indian cricket. The revelations he brought back prompted an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation which led to the disgrace and firing of former captain Mohammad Azharuddin and several others. But Tehelka's second stab, Operation West End, has had vastly greater impact, and may yet bring down the Government. And even if it survives, its hopes of winning again must be sorely dented. Even if ministers brazen the crisis out, the electorate that voted them in as India's last best hope is now sorely disillusioned. Tejpal's new wheeze consisted of setting up two of his journalists as arms middlemen. The expose has raised questions about the ethics of journalists passing themselves off as something they are not, and the politicians caught by the cameras are talking darkly about conspiracies and assaults on the nation's security. But the flagrancy of the wrongdoing Tejpal and his colleagues uncovered has silenced most critics. "I didn't talk to any lawyers or accountants before we did this," says Tejpal, "and all the lawyers I've spoken to since have said we have produced primary evidence of guilt. "Our role is over now. We are out of it." Tejpal says he has been staggered by the response to the revelations. "We've had thousands of emails saying, 'You've made us feel proud to be Indian again'." INDEPENDENT Tehelka.com END |