Cruel irony surrounds Tejpal at his downfall

New Delhi: It’s a situation laden with much cruel irony. The man used to creating a “tehelka” with his writings and stories is news himself over the alleged rape of an employee his daughter’s age earlier this month in Goa.

On Friday, as the cameras panned relentlessly on the 50-year-old Tarun Tejpal and reporters thrust their mikes at him on board the aircraft taking him to Goa, the swagger wasn’t there. But neither did the visage of the man who has gone from “atonement” for what he did to claims of a “consensual” encounter show any signs of remorse.

The man who built “Brand Tehelka” and for himself the image of a crusader with journalism that was done in “public interest” now finds himself staring at the crumbling edifice of Tehelka.

A mighty fall for a man who, in 2006, was included among The Guardian’s list of 20 “new India elite” and hailed as the “Pioneer of a brand of sting journalism which has transformed Indian media.”

The hosannas flooded in then but now the tide has firmly turned against Tejpal. A man once edified and now pilloried for the sexual assault and even his questionable business ventures. A journalist who knew Tejpal before he hit it “big”  remarked, “It’s very sad. From being a great journalist, he now stands accused of rape.”

From all accounts, Tejpal allowed his brilliance and talent to be overtaken by hubris and the need for funding for his various business ventures, not all of them journalistic. Indeed, the funding for many of his ventures came from businessmen of dubious standing.

These words penned by him under the tile “Dancing with the Devil” have a ring of irony about them as he wrote, “In 18 years, had I dabbled more in the business of journalism than in journalism, I would have known better.”

But clearly, as “Brand Tehelka” grew,  Tejpal was dabbling more in the “business of journalism” than in journalism itself. So, a well-research story on Goa’s mining story was spiked as it threatened to hit the funding of Tejpal’s new baby, the literary festival “ThinkFest”. A journalist who was on the roads when Tejpal suddenly announced in early January of 2011 that the business daily Financial World  he was to launch was shutting shop recalls his arrogant and abrasive conduct with its employees when they protested. 

It was in Outlook magazine that the man made his mark in investigative journalism with a story on match-fixing in cricket alongwith another journalist. And then came the “Operation West end” sting operation that rocked the NDA government. Now, Tejpal himself lies fallen from the pedestal.

Next: Tejpal questions FIR’s legitimacy, flays media

Tejpal questions FIR’s legitimacy, flays media

New Delhi/ Panaji: Tarun Tejpal, Tehelka founder who is accused of sexual assault of a woman colleague, on Friday questioned the legitimacy of the FIR and subsequent probe in the case and lashed out at the media accusing it of “screaming and shouting” all the time.

“... There is no complaint officially. An internal mail from the office decides a suo motu FIR?” he told a news channel in New Delhi at the airport. Indicating a political conspiracy in the entire episode, Tejpal said, “It is being monitored on an hour-to-hour basis by some people in Delhi.”

Meanwhile, expressing surprise over the delay in arresting Tejpal, a senior police official closely associated with the probe said, “It was surprising that though there was no stay on the arrest, the state police still chose not to arrest the alleged accused. I don’t remember any sensational case in the past where the alleged accused has been given so much elbow room.”

It was a day of high drama and action as Tejpal, who had disappeared after the controversy erupted, surfaced for the first time at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport on his way to Goa to appear before the sessions court.

In the early hours of Friday, at around 6 am, a combined team of the Goa and Delhi police reached Tejpal’s residence at Link Road in Jangpura, South Delhi. But Tejpal was not there. As the police kept looking for him at several other places, including the homes of some of his friends, his legal team moved the court in Goa for anticipatory bail.