Goa Police has booked Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal for rape and outraging the modesty of a journalist colleague during an event here about ten days ago, even as the Union Home Ministry has sought a report in the event.
“An FIR has been filed for rape and outraging the modesty (against Tejpal). This is one part of the process of investigation and law will take its course,” DGP Kishan Kumar said after the Goa Police filed an FIR in the case. The charges relate to Section 376 (rape) and Section 354 (outraging modesty) of IPC, he said.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has also accused the Tehelka management of trying to cover up the sexual assault and said that the magazine’s Managing Editor was trying to stall the police probe. The State’s DGP has also flayed Shoma’s Chaudhury’s stonewalling as being “uncooperative”. “Police have informed me that they sent an e-mail to the Managing Editor yesterday at 5:18 pm. They have confirmation that it has been received, asking her to co-operate in a crime which is heinous in nature,” Parrikar said.
“We have written to Shoma Chaudhury by way of e-mail. We had asked her to give us the complaint. We have requested but they have not sent,” Kumar said. Goa Police are also attempting to secure a statement from the victim, which hasn’t been secured yet. “As I told you that is matter of investigation, let us leave it to the Investigating Officer,” Kumar said, adding that he was unwilling to disclose any aspect of the investigation to the media.
The DGP said that a special team had been constituted to probe the case and evidence now was still prima facie. Meanwhile, the Union Home Ministry also sought a report in the matter. “The Home Ministry has asked for all details of the Tehelka case from the Goa Government. This is an extremely serious matter,” Minister of State for Home RPN Singh said.
Tejpal has been accused of sexually assaulting a junior colleague twice in a hotel lift during a high-profile conference organised in Goa last week. In Delhi, facing allegations of a cover-up Chaudhury remained defiant, saying they would not approach the police with the complaint and it was for the victim to decide.
With questions being raised over the way the magazine treated the incident in Goa as an internal issue, she, however, admitted to making some mistakes like claiming on behalf of the victim that she was satisfied with the “action” against Tejpal. Chaudhury had no answer to repeated questions why Tehelka did not report the matter to the police and sought to make it an “internal” issue.
Chaudhury replied that she was extremely focused on addressing the victim’s plea for redressal and “forgot that there is a public world that I need to interface with. If I have had even ten minutes to compose myself I would have begun to act with greater measure.” However, she maintained that it was the girl’s call to make it a police case or not.
“The right to go to police is hers (victim’s). I am not going to the police on my own,” Chaudhury said, adding she will cooperate in the probe as long as she is in the post. “If it is hard for me to cooperate, then I will step down,” she said. On the Goa Police’s charge that Tehelka is not cooperating she said: “It is a very difficult time for the magazine. If the Goa Government says we are not cooperating, there is no space or time to cooperate unless she (victim) goes to the police.”
She said when the girl approached her with her complaint she was not driven by vengeance. “She wanted to heal so I did not go to police”. At one stage she even said that the media was jumping to conclusions that it is a sexual assault and rape. Chaudhury referred to her conversation with Tejpal and said when she confronted him about the matter “very, very angrily”, he had a different version which she claimed to have overruled when getting his apology.
“I do feel a sense of outrage and betrayal but he has a different version,” she said. Asked if Tehelka, which claims to have set high standards in its investigation reports, was following double standards in this case, Chaudhury said a three-member committee has been set up which will hear both the sides. “You are jumping to conclusions that it is sexual assault and rape,” she shot back. To another question that the committee is a cosy-club as it is headed by Urvashi Butalia, a friend of Tejpal, she said the media was pre-judging the issue.
Chaudhury defended her actions in the matter saying she had confronted Tejpal, after which he stepped down from his post for six months and apologised to the victim. One of the mistakes she admitted to have made was when she said that the girl was satisfied with Tejpal’s apology. She said: “I could have used a different word.”
Meanwhile, giving a twist to the case, Tejpal issued a statement seeking release of the CCTV footage in which he can be seen with the girl. Claiming that “sometimes life, the complete truth and the need to do the honorable thing can come into conflict,” he said in this case this “anguish was accentuated by the fact that very many intimate people, professional and personal, were involved.”
“For four days, as demanded by Shoma Chaudhury, the Managing Editor, and the recipient of the complaint, I have tried to do what was honorably demanded of me. On Tuesday I issued an apology for the alleged misconduct, as desired by the journalist through Shoma Chaudhury. On Wednesday I stepped down from the editorship of Tehelka and removed myself from the office premises. On Thursday I learnt of the formation of the complaints committee.
“I offer my fullest cooperation to the police and all other authorities, and look to presenting all the facts of this incident to it. I also urge the committee and the police to obtain, examine and release the CCTV footage so that the accurate version of events stands clearly revealed.”
Tejpal’s demand to release the CCTV footage and Chaudhury’s outburst telling the media not to “jump to the conclusion that it was a case of rape and sexual assault,” may have tried to implicate the girl in some way in the lurid saga.
However, an e-mail sent by Tejpal to the girl shows him admitting the guilt. In the e-mail, which could not be independently verified, Tejpal said: “It wrenches me beyond describing, therefore, to accept that I have violated that long-standing relationship of trust and respect between us and I apologized unconditionally for the shameful lapse of judgement that led me to attempt a sexual liaison with you on two occasions on 7 November and 8 November 2013, despite your clear reluctance that you did not want such attention from me.”
He further added: “I understand the extreme distress you have been feeling and if regret could turn time back, the force of mine would surely place us all back in a space and time before this terrible lapse.”
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit described the incident as a “matter of concern and an attack on the self-respect of women”. Demanding a criminal trial against Tejpal, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley asserted that a departmental inquiry and criminal trial must go together. The leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said suggestions that the victim had the choice of refraining from pursuing a criminal investigation were akin to offering the offender an escape route.
The National Commission for Women also swung into action and directed the news magazine to provide, within 24 hours, all details regarding the alleged sexual assault case.