Indian web site struggling after corruption expose
The Guardian reports on tehelka.com, the Indian news site that has been hounded by the government since exposing high-level corruption. They’re now heavily in debt and likely to close soon.
[Tehelka’s] reporters, posing as arms salesmen, had bribed their way into the home of the defence minister, George Fernandes, and handed over £3,000 to one of the minister’s colleagues. The journalists found many other people prepared to take money – senior army officers, bureaucrats, even the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, who was filmed shovelling the cash into his desk.[...]
In the aftermath of the scandal, the Hindu nationalist-led government “unleashed” the inland revenue, the enforcement directorate and the intelligence bureau, India’s answer to MI5, on Tehelka’s office in suburban south Delhi.
They did not find anything. Frustrated, the officials started tearing apart the website’s investors. Tehelka’s financial backer, Shanker Sharma, was thrown in jail without charge.
Detectives also held Aniruddha Bahal, the reporter who carried out the exposÀ, and a colleague, Kumar Badal. Badal is still in prison.
[...]
The government commission set up to investigate Operation West-End, Tehelka’s sting, meanwhile, started behaving very strangely. “The commission didn’t cross-examine a single person found guilty of corruption. It was astonishing,” said Tejpal. Instead, it spent its days rubbishing Tehelka’s journalistic methods.
– Guardian, Website pays price for Indian bribery expose.