The Hindu : No dishonest motive in expose: Tejpal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 29, 2002

National

National

No dishonest motive in expose: Tejpal

By Our legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI June 28. The Editor-in-Chief of the Tehelka portal, Tarun Tejpal, today asserted that there was no financial or dishonest motive in the expose on the alleged corruption in defence deals.

Continuing his deposition before the Justice Venkataswami Commission, Mr. Tejpal said that when the story pertaining to the defence deals started, there was no expectation but only a hope that something would come out.

He denied that there was any ``dishonest motive'' behind the expose.

``We have handed over every bit of material we had on the issue to all the authorities concerned, including the Army court of inquiry. And this has proved to be damaging to the news portal''.

He denied any personal involvement in the sting operation and said his information was based on the personal knowledge of the reporters.

Asked how much he gained by the expose, he said he got Rs. 50 lakhs from the telecast of the tapes as against Rs. 50 to 70 lakhs spent by the portal towards the whole project, out of which Rs. 11 lakhs was spent towards payment of ``bribe'' alone.

He refuted the charge that the portal had the habit of sensationalising issues of sex and fabricating stories around prominent persons such as cricketer, Kapil Dev, (in the match-fixing story) to defame them and that the portal lacked journalistic ethics.

Explaining the ``match fixing' story exposed by the portal, he said subsequent inquiry and events vindicated our stand.

He said the allegations against the former Indian captain were not made by his portal rather they were comments made by a fellow cricketer.

He said it was true that Mr. Kapil Dev had been exonerated by the CBI but on whether the allegations were widely disbelieved by the people he could not comment.

Mr. Tejpal said he stood by an allegation of ``deal-fixing'' made by one defence middle-man in the tapes about Prime Minister, Vajpayee's son-in-law, Ranjan Bhattacharya.

He alleged it was an ``endorsement of what has been generally believed.''

He will continue his deposition on Monday.

Meanwhile, modifying its earlier order, the Commission said it was allowing cross-examination on ``voice-overs'' and ``editorial comments'' ``for a limited purpose in support of the case that editing was malicious.''

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National