Tarun Tejpal applies for anticipatory bail, seeks independent probe

Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal on Monday moved the Delhi high court seeking anticipatory bail and transfer of the case lodged against him by the Goa police to the CBI or any other independent agency.

Tejpal has been charged under several sections of the IPC, including rape.

Monday also saw the young woman journalist, who has accused Tejpal of sexual assault, resigning from the organisation, saying “Tehelka did not help me”. The Goa police got in touch with her in Mumbai and recorded her statement, which states her version of the sequence of events that took place in a lift in the Grand Hyatt hotel in Goa, earlier this month.

Tejpal, in his bail application, has described the registration of FIR against him as “wrath of vengeance unleashed by the senior-most political executive of Goa”.

Who is the senior-most political executive of Goa? Of course, the chief minister of the BJP-ruled state.

It’s in the public domain that Tejpal had friends in the earlier Congress government in Goa. And that the Congress party and Congress governments have always been keen to help Tejpal, and Tehelka has returned the favour with stings that targeted the BJP.

Not long ago, Deccan Herald ran a story titled “Tehelka arm-twisted Goa govt into funding its literary fest”.

It spoke of Tejpal’s clout in the Congress party; how in 2011, after “several preliminaries and high-power calls, some of them from Sonia Gandhi’s political adviser Ahmed Patel”, then Congress chief minister Digambar Kamat met Neena Tejpal and agreed to help hold “Think 2011”, the magazine’s ‘festival of ideas’. “She came with a few other people to meet me and asked us to associate with the event. Since prominent people, including central ministers were coming, we agreed to help them,” Kamat told Deccan Herald.

On Monday, exactly two years later, Tejpal in his petition to the Delhi court said: “They [the BJP] have it against me for investigation and sting done against the party and office bearers.”

The petition was mentioned in the court of justice GS Sistani by senior advocates KTS Tulsi and Geeta Luthra and the matter will be heard on Tuesday.

Tejpal, in his petition, filed through advocate Sandeep Kapur, has also sought transit bail so as to approach the appropriate court in Goa. “The complaint is clearly motivated, false and an afterthought with oblique motives. The lady continued to participate in the conference with elan.

She took part in every festivities (sic). There will be CCTV footage and photos to substantiate it,” the petition mentioned.

The Goa police lodged an FIR against Tejpal on November 22 under sections 376 (rape), 376 (2)(k) (rape by a person of a woman in his custody taking advantage of his official position) and 354 (outraging modesty) of the IPC in connection with the incident.

“The investigating officer has got in touch with the victim to get all the details of the incident from her,” DIG (Goa) OP Mishra told dna.

Earlier on Sunday, a Goa police team questioned the managing editor of Tehelka Shoma Chaudhury for 10 hours. The statements of the survivor’s three colleagues, with whom she had shared her ordeal, were also recorded on Sunday. Goa police seized the hard disk, laptop, ipad, cellphones and documents used for communication after the incident, from the Tehelka office.

Meawhile, even though five Tehelka staff members, including the survivor, quit the magazine in the wake of the controversy, the newsroom is all busy preparing for this week’s print issue.

“We have vociferously condemned of whatever has happened. I also thought of quitting for a moment. But later I realised an act of individual at a private place cannot result in shutting down or mass resignation from an organisation. Disassociating yourself from situation is always the easiest way out,” said a Tehelka journalist.

So, as another issue of Tehelka gets ready to hit the stands on Friday orSaturday, it will be interesting to know what will be the cover story. Will it be on the lines of an open letter published in the Tehelka issue, dated May 30, 2009, titled, ‘Mrs Gandhi and her extra God’?

In that open letter to the chairperson of the just elected to power UPA-I, Tejpal makes his affiliations clear. In prose that matches snatches of his recent letter to managing editor Shoma Chaudhury, Tejpal goes the extra mile to praise Sonia Gandhi and “your boy”, an obvious reference to Rahul Gandhi.

At one point, Tejpal writes: “Mercifully your boy seems more in touch with the soul of India than those who try and barter dieties for votes... Young men who help old ladies cross the street can also grow up to steer nations across rocky roads”.

At another point he writes, “And yes, as I bid you speed and strength, with the extra God by your side, may I make a final plea. You have given us of yourself, and of your son. Now will you kindly also give unto us your luminous daughter?”

That should explain why the Congress party has always been ready to help Tarun Tejpal. Maybe with that extra God by his side it makes sense for Tejpal to get the case against him investigated by a central agency, one like the CBI.