Tarun Tejpal, editor-in-chief of tehelka.com, one of the best known
names in Indian journalism in recent years, does not like to mince
words. He is not scared to call spade a spade. His organization
has been in the lime light eversince he and his team decided to
launch tehelka.com couple of years back.
His first major expose on betting in the cricket scandal made tehelka.com famous overnight. Former cricket player Manoj Prabhakar in an under cover operation caught many top
international cricketers of India on the wrong foot and made them admit that the match fixing was very much prevalent in India too and some of the cricketers were very much involved in the
scandal.
Last year tehelka.com exposed corruption in the Indian defence
deals through its candid operation called Operation Westend. Two tehelka reporters posed as arm dealers to catch pollitical personalities like Bangaru Laxman and top serving officers of the
Indian Army on camera in action. This exposé forced the Government of India to institute a commission of inquiry headed by Justice K Venkataswamy.
"The Central Bureau of Investigation officials -- at the instance of the present government -- have
been hounding tehelka.com and its reporters in their effort to browbeat them. First they registered a poaching case against one of our photojournalists, Kumar Badal, and now they have arrested our senior journalist Anirudha Bahal. This is sheer persecution," he says.
Bahal was one of the key persons involved in Operation Westend that even forced Defence Minister George Fernandes to resign, though he was back on the job a few months later.
The CBI claims that it has arrested Bahal because he manhandled a CBI official, a charge that Bahal denies outright.
Also see:
Aniruddha Bahal arrested
Transcript of the Aniruddha Bahal chat after the defence exposé
The Defence Scandal: the complete coverage
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