Tehelka () is an Indian news magazine known for its investigative journalism and sting operations. According to the British newspaper The Independent, the Tehelka was founded by Tarun Tejpal, Aniruddha Bahal and another colleague who worked together at the Outlook magazine after "an investor with deep pockets" agreed to underwrite their startup. Bahal left Tehelka in 2005 to start Cobrapost – an Indian news website, after which Tehelka was managed by Tejpal through 2013. In 2013, Tejpal stepped aside from Tehelka after being accused of sexual assault by his employee. Tehelka had cumulative losses of till 2013, while being majority owned and financed by Kanwar Deep Singh – an industrialist, a politician and a member of Indian parliament (Rajya Sabha).Tarun Tejpal's many businesses, Business Standard (28 November 2013)Will Tehelka's real owners please stand up?, The Economic Times (23 November 2013)
The magazine began circulating tabloid-format newspapers in 2004 and switched to magazine in 2007. Tehelka first sting operation was on a cricket match fixing scandal in 2000. In 2001, it won national fame and public support for its sting "Operation West End". This 2001 undercover operation recorded and released footage of government officials accepting prostitutes and bribes in a fake arms deal. This caused the resignations of several officials including the then Defence Minister and two presidents of the ruling parties. In 2007, Tehelka published a report against members of the Bajrang Dal and for their role in the Naroda Patiya massacre during the 2002 Gujarat violence. The report, called "The Truth: Gujarat 2002", was based on a six-month sting operation with video footage of the members admitting their role in the violence. It won the International Press Institute (IPI) India Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2010 and 2011.
History Tarun Tejpal, Aniruddha Bahal and a colleague quit their jobs from Outlook magazine and started Tehelka in New Delhi as a website in 2000.
Tehelka gained national fame when Aniruddha Bahal and Matthew Samuel completed and published undercover videotapes about corruption in a fake arms deal through the sting – "Operation West End" – in 2001. The Tehelka report triggered a government inquiry. The exposé caught senior defence personnel and politicians of the Samata Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and others accepting bribes from a fake company offering fake defence products. The scandal and subsequent inquiry led to the resignation of many including India's Defence Minister. Politicians from various parties called for action against Tehelka journalists for its unethical methods such as procuring and providing prostitutes for its undercover sting. According to Navdip Dhariwal, the Tehelka staff saw the government inquiry as a direct attack on them. By 2003, Tehelka staff decreased from 120 to 3 and the website shut down because of debts. Bahal left Tehelka in the same year, saying the government was "bogging us down with a lot of legal nonsense" and later founded Cobrapost.com.
In 2004, after more than 200 writers, lawyers, business people and activists became founder-subscribers, Tehelka was relaunched as a reader-financed weekly newspaper in tabloid format. Among the supporters were activist Arundhati Roy, Congress party politician Shashi Tharoor and Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul. It called itself the "People's Paper" and the reporters took a tour around the country promoting what they called "free, fair and fearless" journalism. After its Naroda Patiya sting operation in 2007, it sold around 75,000 to 90,000 copies per week. It still suffered large financial losses, since it attracted very few advertisements and the magazine primarily relied on subscribers and copies sold as of 2008. Tehelka had cumulative losses of through 2013, while being majority owned and financed by Kanwar Deep Singh – an industrialist, a politician and a member of Indian parliament (Rajya Sabha) initially elected by Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, later All India Trinamool Congress.
Tejpal changed Tehelka from tabloid to magazine in September 2007 to encourage more potential advertisers, but found it difficult because of their sting operations. Tejpal started the Hindi language website in 2007 and then Tehelka's Hindi News magazine. Sanjay Dubey was the executive editor of the Hindi magazine. In the early years, Tarun Tejpal was Tehelka's largest shareholder through his shell company Agni Media. In an interview to The New York Times, Tejpal stated that he covered the losses at Tehelka by soliciting funds from his personal contacts.
"THiNK Fest" was started in 2011 as an annual literary festival and promoted as an event of Tehelka, though the program was run by an organisation called Thinkworks Pvt Ltd, a company owned by Tejpal, his sister Neena and managing editor Shoma Chaudhury. It featured Bollywood actors, global thinkers and sessions on new technology.
According to The New York Times, during a Tehelka organized "Think Fest" event in November 2013, a staff reporter of Tehelka accused Tejpal of rape and repeated sexual assault.Indian Journalist Charged With Rape of a Reporter, Ellen Barry, The New York Times (14 February 2014) Tejpal was arrested by Goa police and he stepped aside as editor of Tehelka, and his colleague Shoma Chaudhury resigned from Tehelka on 28 November because of the incident. In 2014, Mathew Samuel became the managing editor of Tehelka. In March 2016, Charanjit Ahuja became the editor of the fortnightly.
Sting operations
Match-fixing scandal (2000) Bahal and Tejpal convinced cricketer Manoj Prabhakar to record conversations with his colleagues, after the South Africa cricket match fixing scandal involving Hansie Cronje in March 2000. Prabhakar and Bahal went around the country and Prabhakar, wearing hidden recording equipment, attended meetings with important Indian cricket board officials (BCCI) and players. He recorded conversations where they talked about links between players and bookmakers, matches being thrown in return for money, deliberate run-outs and the names of players involved. They recorded more than 40 hours of taped conversations, which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) used as evidence for its own inquiry. The CBI implicated Mohammad Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja and Ajay Sharma as the cricketers involved. The documentary Fallen Heroes: The Betrayal of a Nation, which was released in May of the same year, showed Prabhakar's work and Bahal published his report on Tehelka.com.
Operation West End (2001)
In 2001, Tehelka did its first major sting investigation called "Operation West End". It involved Mathew Samuel and Bahal, filming how they bribed several defence officials and politicians from the then-ruling NDA-led (National Democratic Alliance) Indian government, posing as arms dealers. Charging a commission from defence deals is illegal in India. They started their investigation in August 2000 because of hearing rumours of middlemen getting rich in such deals in the 1980s. They created a fake British company based in Regent Street, London called "West End". Bahal and Samuel then found out that the Indian army would be interested in obtaining thermal imaging cameras. They printed business cards and photographs of particular camera models in Tehelka'''s office in suburban Delhi and Samuel did the main dealings.
They initially had to bribe junior officials in the defence ministry for amounts ranging from to , to help them in securing deals with several middlemen. These middlemen said they "fixed" deals before involving jets and artillery; Samuel and Bahal recorded these conversations using hidden cameras. They dealt with Samata Party President Jaya Jaitley (The then Defence Minister George Fernandes belonged to this party), whom they paid , and she agreed to tell Fernandes about them. After bribing other officials, they were introduced to the then Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) President Bangaru Laxman who accepted as a "small new year's gift". Laxman recommended they meet Brajesh Mishra, who was the National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The operation took seven and a half months with Tejpal later saying that the total amount they paid in bribes was . The deals were in expensive hotels and few officials asked for branded whisky. In this whole operation, they recorded around 100 hours of video footage.
Six months after Tehelka had made public its investigations, The Indian Express acquired and published transcripts of the video tapes. It showed that as part of the investigations, the reporters hired prostitutes to serve the officials. This raised ethical questions about the methods used. Tejpal later issued a statement denying that any of its women staff were provided as prostitutes. Politicians of the ruling parties called for the journalist's arrest for supplying prostitutes and questioned their ethics. Tejpal called that part of the investigation as a "needed transgression". The public and majority of their competitors supported them; The Times of India concluded that the issue of ethics "pales before the sleaze their team has dug up", The Hindu called it a "turning point in Indian journalism" but The Indian Express criticised the methods used by the Tehelka team. Tejpal received death threats and was given police protection. His reporters said that their "extraordinary methods" were for the larger public and national interest.
V. S. Naipaul held a news conference and met the then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani. Naipaul told the media, "This thing that has happened to Tehelka has been profoundly disappointing to me, It comes from another era. It serves no purpose. It seems to me it will profoundly damage the country." In 2004, the CBI registered cases against Jaitley, Laxman and others in the army and the Ministry of Defence. In 2012, Laxman was sentenced to four years in jail by additional sessions Judge Kanwal Jeet Arora for this case.New Delhi, 27 Apr 2012 "Ex-BJP chief Bangaru Laxman convicted in fake arms deal case". Indian Express Author and journalist Madhu Trehan wrote a non-fiction book in 2009 on this incident, called Tehelka as Metaphor.
"The Truth: Gujarat 2002" (2007)
In 2007, Tehelka released footage filmed over six months relating to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. According to Uday Mahurkar writing in the India Today, it showed "VHP activists, actual perpetrators of the crimes as well as government counsel boasting" they had a role in attacking the Muslim community during the 2002 Gujarat violence. The report, called "The Truth: Gujarat 2002", was published in its 7 November 2007 issue and the video footage was shown on Aaj Tak. It said that the violence was possible because of approval by the state police, as well as the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi.
The Tehelka report was based on allegations made during the undercover interviews. According to Mahurkar, efforts to corroborate the allegations suggest that it contains "boastful lies". For example, two interviewees claimed that Modi visited them in Naroda Patiya and thanked them, when official records of the chief minister Modi's movements show he did not. Similarly, another VHP activist stated in the Tehelka report that a police superintendent named Gadhvi was on duty and killed five Muslims in Dariapur during the riots. However, attempts to corroborate this Tehelka report claim failed as Gadhvi arrived in Dariapur a month later.
Other notable sting operations