The Hindu : Tehelka displays `tools of trade'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 25, 2003

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National

Tehelka displays `tools of trade'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI. NOV. 24. Tehelka today showed the media its "tools of trade" — spy cameras and recording devices mounted in a briefcase, a woman's handbag, a satchel and a necktie — with which it caught BJP's Bangaru Laxman accepting money and Samata Party's Jaya Jaitley directing its reporters to a party official.

This follows the Inquiry Commission's order that it handover the equipment for "forensic" examination.

Tehelka's Editor-in-Chief, Tarun Tejpal, said that "prima facie there is no reason for this." He questioned the lack of transparency in the public commission's choice of an "undisclosed expert from an undisclosed location" to conduct the test. Tehelka had no idea where its tapes had been sent and where its recording equipment would now go.

He said Tehelka was not casting aspersions on the commission's head, Justice S.N. Phukan, who was simply doing his job, but "was faced by the cacophony of those who want the same thing." All those before the commission, with the exception of Tehelka, were only interested in delays and exoneration and the Government's stand on the issue had been "consistently amoral."

The focus on "forensics" was simply a way of discrediting Tehelka's expose and legitimising unethical practices. Those recorded taking money had, several times in the last two years, publicly accepted taking the money.

Mr. Tejpal said Tehelka had done its best to cooperate with the commission. He and his colleagues, Aniruddha Behal and Mathew Samuel, had deposed before the commission and been cross-examined several times. They had provided the commission with all the material it wanted. But, their resources were stretched and they could not continue to make claims on the free legal representation they had so far received.

Tehelka had no expectation of any fairness from the process, he added.

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