Author: Virendra Kapoor
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: December 15, 2002
Now it can be told. Tehelka
Commission was derailed by those who feared that it would soon unravel
their own dirty doings. Fearing exposure of their get-rich-quick
scam in the name of public service journalism, a conspiracy was hatched
to embarrass the Chairman of the Commission, Justice Venkataswami, with
the sole objective of provoking him to quit in a huff. An honourable
man, Justice Venkataswami played straight in the hands of those who desperately
wanted the Commission not to look into their financial skulduggery.
When they questioned the propriety of Justice Venkataswamy's appointment
as Chairman of the Tribunal on Advance Rulings for Customs and Central
Excise, he quit. The only people relieved were the self-confessed
conmen at the Tehelka portal, for the Commission was all set to probe their
financial dealings, including the multi-crore operations of the share-broker
couple who had bankrolled the website.
The Chief Justice of India, S. P.
Bharucha, one of the most straightforward and no-nonsense judges to have
become the CJI in recent years, had recommended Justice Venkataswamy's
name for heading the Tribunal for Advance Rulings for Customs and Central
Excise because (a) fit was a light charge which would in no case interfere
with Justice Venkataswamy's work as the Tehelka Commissioner, and (b) no
other retired SC judge was available to take up this part-time work.
Justice Venkataswamy was unlikely to gain from his additional assignment.
Most significantly, the second appointment
of Justice Venkataswamy was made early in June this year while the campaign
of slander against the judge was launched only in November. Between
June and November, the only thing that had happened was that the Commission
was now ready to explore the financial aspect the Tehelka portal, including
the crucial question whether its so-called expose was a cover to help its
chief financier to make a huge killing on the stock exchanges by hear-hammering.
That is when they pointed a finger of blame at Justice Venkataswamy and,
predictably, ensured his ouster.
A tight lid was thus put on the
dirty doings of the clever operators behind the doctor company who now
go around posing themselves as the victims of official vendetta even as
they refuse to account for the crores of rupees that they had made in the
name of so-called public service journalism. For instance, the founding
editor of the dotcom helped himself to a couple of lakhs in salary and
perks every moth. Turning it into a veritable gravvy train, he extended
the largesse to his brother and sister as well, gifting them Rs. One lakh
and Rs. Half lakh every month for doing god knows what for the sleazy outfit
which boasted of one of the wildest pornographic sites till the other day.
Public service clearly began with the service of one's own family and friends.
In the words of C. R. Irani, the
Editor of the venerable 'The Statesman' - "there were call girls, bribes,
sale of tapes to Zee TV for Rs. 50 lakhs, and a search for a venture capitalist
to finance operations. Hindujas were approached . the search of Tehelka
dotcom, office showed as many as 437 sex items." and one of its little
known editors in a mysterious transaction received advances of US dollars
2,50,000 and British pounds 75,000 for a work of fiction Bunker 13, which
no one knows when, if at all, will see the light of day.
Worse, the counsel of the
commi9ssion was found to be mixed up with the counsels of the get-rich-quick
dotcom company. The telephone records bear out the fact that the
counsel of the commission was in constant touch with his Tehelka counterparts.
Indeed, in a tit-for-tat operations, the Samata Party leader, Jaya Jaitley,
exposed the unholy nexus between one of the counsel of the commission with
the main counsel of the controversial portal.
The story of the Tehelka dotcom,
then, is the story of extraordinary sleaze and dirty tricks. Its
promoters hit upon the idea of dotcom boom to become millionaires overnight.
The prevailing rot in the society served as an excuse for them to exploit
it for personal enrichment. This it was that one of the main promoters
floated a publishing company while still working as a full-time journalist
(which was worse than a service policeman or a Chief Minister floating
a charitable trust or an NGO). Again, the antecedents of one of the
reporters behind the so-called expose would not bear scrutiny.
Remember that one of the first exposes
by Telehelka had sought to blacken the face of India's original sporting
icon, Kapil dev. The major domos at the dotcom had relied on the
former Indian cricketer Manoj Prabhakar to sully Kapil's name. But
here again Tehelka was exposed when Prabhakar found himself in jail on
charges of running a fraudulent chit fund company which had deprived the
poor people of Uttaranchal of their meagre savings while Tehelka's victim
of calumny had his name duly cleared by a thorough inquiry in the so-called
Cricketgate. Had they allowed the Venkataswamy commission to complete its
enquiry, there was every likelihood that Tehelka would have ended up with
further egg on its face for its so-called Defencegate. Hence the
conspiracy to force Venkataswamy out an shut down the commission looking
into one of the sleaziest stories in Indian journalism.
