Tehelka as a on-line magazine regularly carried out public interest sting operations. The Tehelka editorial team specialises in under cover operation 2001.They are famous for Bangaru Laxman ‘sting operation’.Bangaru Laxman,president of the main oppossition Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) ,Jaya Jaitly and a Army General were among several people secretly videotaped by journalists who were posing as representatives of a London based arms company.The tapes were broadcast on television channels in India.They rocked the government and prompted the resignation of then Defence Minister and Laxman.The Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) also started a case against Laxman.
Tehelka reemerged as a full-fledged print magazine after few years,continues its crusade against corruption in high places.Its excellent investigative stories include Tehelka’s month long investigation to tracked down the middlemen who acted on behalf of politicians to bribe crucial eyewitnesses and survivors of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs,immediate after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards(october8,2005),from 2005 to the end of i2006at least 19 children-all from poor families went missing from Nithari,a slum in Noida,near Delhi.Repeated complaints by parents of missing children to the Police didn’t help a single missing child.After the intervention of High Court, the police found skeletal remains of children buried in a drain running behind affluent businessman Moninder Singh Pandher’s Noida house.Initial investigation revealed that pandher,along with his domestic help Surendra Koli,had sexually abused and killed the children.The Magazine conducted several sting operation to find that several police officer had helped Pandher to cover-up the heinous crime(April7,2007),Zeheera Sheikh and the Best Bakery case became the symbols of 2002 Gujrat carnage.Fourteen people were murdered outside the backery in Vadodora and Zaheera was the prosecutions main witness.But she changed her testimony thrice and all the accused were set free for lack of evidence.Tehelka investigation showed how Zaheera had been threatened by powerful people and also paid Rs.18lakh(around$25,000) to change her testimony(january1,2005),Manu Sharma,son of a politician walked into the Tamarind Court restaurant’s bar in New Delhi on April29,1999,and demanded a drink.Model Jessica Lall was shot dead for denying him one.It was an open case.but three key witnesses Shiv Das,karan Rajput and Shyan Munsi turned hostile.Tehelka’s sting operation reveal that all eyewitnesses had been bought off or threatened(october7,2006) and of course large number of Muslim massacre by Hindu fundamentalists in Gujrat(the truth Gujrat2002).
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