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Tehelka.com managing director and editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal on Saturday evening accused the Prime Minister's Office, especially Brajesh Mishra, of carrying out a witch-hunt and slander campaign against his media house.
Naming Mishra, the all-powerful principal secretary of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpyee, as the mastermind behind machinations against tehelka, Tejpal said ''my sources told me'' that several government agencies have been set after the internet web site.
He said the government had set agencies like the Intelligence Bureau, Central Bureau of Investigation and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence on tehelka, to discredit its investigative findings on corruption in defence deals, which is now threatening the existence of the government.
Tejpal, seemingly ready to take the fight to the PMO, said a desperate Mishra and gang were now even dragging his father, a former veteran of three wars India has fought, into the affair. "He was never associated with Arjun Singh," Tejpal said, dismissing Bharatiya Janata Party claims on Friday that his father was associated with the senior Congress leader.
He said Mishra had been holding consultations and confabulations with Union Cabinet ministers and others to spread slander against tehelka.
There have been allegations flying thick and fast about tehelka since the last few days. The BJP's rumour mills have it that the web site was working for Dawood and that Tarun Tejpal and his company were being exploited by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.
If a journalist like Tejpal, with about two decades of experience in the national media, could be targeted in such a manner, what would have been the situation if a young reporter of two or three years had done the same, he asked.
Tejpal said the PMO had been particularly targeting, besides him, Kunwar `Minty' Tejpal, his brother who also works for tehelka, and Mathew Samuel, who paired with tehelka's editor (investigations) Anirudha Bahal to record the secret film.
Tejpal claimed that Samuel had been questioned at least six times since August by the Intelligence Bureau.
The tehelka managing editor also alleged that the IB was tapping their telephones and by the time they realised it, the investigators had stopped discussing anything on land phones. "We used to use cash cards, changing our mobile numbers frequently," Tejpal said.
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