Goa police quiz Tehelka staff, fail to meet Tejpal

Agencies/Panaji/New Delhi

A team of Goa police returned from New Delhi yesterday after questioning Tehelka’s managing editor Shoma Chaudhury and three witnesses but did not establish any contact with the magazine’s founder Tarun Tejpal, accused of sexually assaulting a junior colleague.

“We have not established contact with Tarun Tejpal yet,” Deputy Inspector General of Police O P Mishra said at a press conference in Panaji.

He said the police team questioned Chaudhury and other Tehelka employees in Delhi.

“They have also taken relevant documents in possession and some electronic items,” he said.

The three-member police team questioned Chaudhury for over nine hours from 4.30pm on Saturday to 2am yesterday at the magazine’s south Delhi office.

Her other colleagues - Shougat Dasgupta, G Vishnu and Ishan Tankha - were questioned for four hours yesterday at Goa Sadan, the state government’s guest house in New Delhi.

“I was questioned for about nine hours. I fully co-operated and shared every document that is relevant ... it was a good experience. I hope (for) clarity in truth and justice,” Chaudhury told reporters after the questioning.

Asked about the three colleagues, she said: “The only thing I would say to everybody involved is that they should speak the truth fearlessly and I really hope some justice and truth comes into this case finally.”

The victim had mentioned the names of the three in her e-mail to Chaudhury.

The victim has publicly pleaded with Tejpal to halt what she called intimidation and harassment.

The woman journalist claimed she had been sexually assaulted twice in a hotel in Goa during a conference organised by the magazine last month.

Tehelka, which pioneered undercover sting operations in India, has been embroiled in the scandal since Wednesday when it was leaked that Tejpal had agreed to take six months’ leave for “misconduct.”

In a statement to local media late Saturday, the woman said a member of Tejpal’s family had visited her mother’s house in New Delhi on Friday evening and asked her mother to “protect” the editor.

The relative also “demanded to know who I was seeking legal help from and what I wanted as the result of my complaint of sexual molestation by Mr Tejpal,” the statement said.

The woman said the visit had placed “tremendous emotional pressure” on her family at an “intensely traumatic time.”

“I fear this may be the beginning of a period of further intimidation and harassment,” said the statement, carried on the front pages of several newspapers yesterday.

“I call upon all persons connected to Mr Tejpal and his associates to refrain from approaching me or my family members,” the statement said.

Tejpal, 50, is the founding editor of Tehelka, known for its hard-hitting investigations into sexual violence against women and gender inequality, as well as into corruption and other lawbreaking.

With the media newly sensitised to sexual assault cases after a string of widely publicised gang-rape cases this year, the incident has been front-page news and the magazine has been accused of hypocrisy.

The fatal gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus last December touched off sometimes violent demonstrations and a long period of introspection in India about the treatment of women and rising crime against them.

In an e-mail to staff of the New Delhi-based magazine, Tejpal admitted that “a bad lapse of judgment, an awful misreading of the situation, have led to an unfortunate incident that rails against all we believe in and fight for.”

But Tejpal has denied the assault allegation and offered to co-operate with police.

Will De Niro be questioned?

Hollywood legend Robert De Niro seems to be drawn into the Tehelka case for no fault of his. De Niro, who stayed in a VIP suite close to the elevator of the hotel where Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal allegedly sexually assaulted the woman journalist, finds his name inadvertently mentioned twice in the first information report filed by Goa police. Asked if the police would question the Godfather II star because of his physical proximity to the scene of crime, Goa’s Deputy Inspector General O P Mishra Mishra said: “This is an investigation and many things are likely to emerge. Whosesoever’s testimony is required for investigation will be taken.” De Niro’s name is mentioned twice in the FIR filed by the police after a complaint was made by the victim to Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhury. De Niro was the star speaker at a conference organised by Tehelka. The complaint says Tejpal used meeting De Niro as an excuse for luring the young woman into the lift. “Let’s go wake up Bob (De Niro), and I asked him why he wanted to do that. I then realised that Tejpal was simply pressing buttons on the lift’s panel to make the elevator stay in circuit, preventing it from stopping anywhere, and for the doors to open,” says the FIR in one instance, quoting extensively from the written complaint sent by the woman journalist to Chaudhury.