Cooped up in a ventilator-less, dingy lockup Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal Monday asked police for newspapers. Not to read, but as a bedding appendage to spread out on the floor before a nap.
Day 2 for Tejpal, who has been accused of raping a junior colleague, was not all about resting up though. Tejpal spent a majority of the day in a Government hospital where he was subjected to a host of tests, beginning with a potency test, which came out positive. The Goa Medical College’s urology department entertained Tejpal at 9 am for the potency test, a procedure which has been made mandatory under the new rape law. Officials at the medical college said that the examination fetched positive result.
He was also administered several blood tests, apart from a general medical examination. Tejpal was later taken to the Crime branch where he was briefly questioned by investigating officer Sunita Sawant. Tejpal could be later under police escort taken to the Grand Hyatt hotel later on Monday or Tuesday for his version of the events and to recreate the crime scene, the same hotel where Tejpal last month entertained global and Indian celebrities like Robert De Niro and Amitabh Bachchan.
The victim in her emails to Tehelka Managing Editor Shoma Chaudary as well as her statement to the Goa Police said that Tejpal raped her twice in the hotel elevator on November 7 and 8 during the conference organised by a company owned by Tejpal. “He will then be confronted with the footage from CCTVs outside the elevator which partly confirms the victim’s story,” a source said.
Tejpal is believed to have been questioned about his the discrepancies in his different apologies and versions of events that took place via email to the victim, then his junior colleague and then his public statements that the case was politically driven. Tejpal, meanwhile, spent most of the last 24 hours in his cell sleeping on a makeshift newspaper mat in company of four frog poachers nabbed by forest department officials.
In absence of a lockup for the forest department, those arrested by the forest department are interred in the police lockup. The following evening Tejpal’s family turned up with a mattress for the editor, but was refused entry because the court had not permitted the use of a blanket leading to an argument between the family and the police. Tejpal, meanwhile, has also asked for a table fan to be placed outside his cell so that he could sleep in comfort.