TARUN TEJPAL, TEHELKA EDITOR: This used to be our main editorial floor. This used to work 24 hours a day, and at any given time, you would have at least 20 journalists and five designers working here - this was the design department.
COHEN: Tarun Tejpal is Editor-in-Chief of Tehelka, a news and current affairs website responsible for some of the most remarkable scoops in Indian journalism. Out of the 115 staff Tehelka used to employ, less than 10 - unpaid - now remain. Tehelka has been crushed by a relentless campaign of government harassment.
TARUN TEJPAL: We had a terrific team here and I think we had, most of them had the kind of feeling that crew members have when the ship is sinking, you know. You know, you think, "It's not gunna sink, it's not gunna sink - we'll get by, we'll get by."
COHEN: This is the footage that rocked India's political establishment and earned Tehelka formidable enemies - grainy pictures of high-ranking army officers gratefully accepting bribes.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles) Tehelka: Sir, this is a small gift for the new year party.
Bangaru Laxman: No, thats
Tehelka: New year party fund, 1 lakh rupees, fine? So what time can I call?
COHEN: The leader of India's ruling party pocketing another stack of cash. Posing as arms dealers, Tehelka's journalists stalked the corridors of power with hidden cameras, uncovering a network of graft. When their story was made public, it claimed the head of the defence minister and two party presidents. Now Tehelka is paying the price for taking on the government of India.
TARUN TEJPAL: The truth was, there were just one or two of us fighting this propaganda war, whereas the government was deploying the entire establishment to not only witch-hunt us - I mean, every agency of the government was unleashed on us - enforcement directorate, intelligence bureau, CBI and company board, IRS, income tax - there was no agency of the government that was not unleashed on us.
JAYA JAITLY, FORMER SAMATA PARTY PRESIDENT: Tehelka are buccaneer journalists. They have no sense of responsibility and they don't know what journalism is. They got away with the cricket, so they thought that they would make a whole lot of money and become famous and claim that they can, with the strength of their great exposes, knock-off governments and very powerful people.
COHEN: Tehelka first shot to prominence in May, 2000, when it launched its expose of match fixing in cricket, "Fallen Heroes". Secretly filmed conversations with cricketers caused a worldwide sensation. In cricket-crazed India, Tehelka became a household name.
TARUN TEJPAL: So we decided we would run a sting operation and we found a lot of the big players and administrators happily singing about match fixing when they thought they were off-camera, and that for us actually nailed the truth of match fixing. It lead to two inquiries, it created a huge uproar and I think it led to a global clean-up in cricket.
COHEN: For its next trick, Tehelka turned its attention from cricket to the even murkier world of arms dealers and defence procurement. Once again, hidden cameras were put to devastating use.
TEHELKA VIDEO OPERATION WEST END VIDEO TITLE A story of how the suitcase people are compromising Indian Defence: It all started with Senior Section Officer Sashi Menon, in the Ministry of Defence, wanting to make some money from arms dealers. We at Tehelka.com floated a fictitious arms manufacturing company based in London, called West End International.
TARUN TEJPAL: The truth is, if you live in Delhi, each of us knows that all the fancy farm houses, all the fancy Mercedes, are owned by defence middlemen. So part of the whole thing was to crack this whole story open about defence deals and pay-offs, and that's how the stories began to germinate, that "Let's give it a shot. This is this kind of holy cow, but we all know it's completely rotten. Let's see what we can come up with."
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Tehelka: Sir, your mind is there with us.
Brigadier Iqbal Singh: Mind is there, of course.
Tehelka: Please, 50,000 is there. (Money being handed over and put in suitcase)
COHEN: A Tehelka journalist posing as an arms dealer set about hawking hand-held thermal cameras to the Indian Army. He soon discovered that every favour has its price - anything upwards from a bottle of the best-quality scotch.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Major General Ahluwalia: Saala, if you come to my house to meet me on Diwali, you can't talk without bringing Blue Label. If you are talking about making a couple of crores of rupees, you can't give me bloody Black Label also. Let's be very clear about it.
Tehelka: True fact, sir.
COHEN: Their initial contact was a clerk in the Ministry of Defence, who introduced them to a Colonel, who introduced them to a Lieutenant-Colonel, who introduced them to a Brigadier, and so on. Every one of them on the take.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Major General Ahluwalia: You have to create a network and let me tell you it has got, you know, because the carrot at the other end is big for everybody. You need very deep pockets. Let's be very clear about it.
Colonel Sayal: No, that is understood.
COHEN: Working undercover for eight months, reporter Samuel Matthews secretly filmed serving and retired army officers, defence bureaucrats, middlemen and political functionaries.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Sulekha: This is Samuel Mathew.
COHEN: Somehow, despite several comical blunders, his cover wasn't blown.
TARUN TEJPAL: There's a point at which Samuel Matthews is asked, "Which bank does your company bank with?" and he says, "Thomas Cook". There's another point where he's asked, "Where is your company headquarters in England?" and he says "Manchester United". He just said the things that came to his mind and sounded plausible, you know. And I'm here to say, it's a miracle that he didn't say you know, "My MD is David Beckham." I mean, he would've probably got away with it.
COHEN: It was here, in great secrecy, that Matthews' footage was kept. Aniruddha Bahal was the journalist in charge of running Operation West End. A veteran of the match-fixing story, he'd never expected this investigation to go for so long or to reveal so much.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL, TEHELKA JOURNALIST: When it started off, it was like any other story. I mean, probability of the story going anywhere was maybe 5%, 10%, and there were lots of things we could have done much better, but we didn't have that benefit - it was only, the story grew incrementally in value over the months and 3, 4 months into it we realised, I mean, I realised, "Wow, this is something, going to be something." Yeah, this is the place where Matthew's meeting Bangaru Laxman. This is the second meeting.
COHEN: Bangaru Laxman was President of the BJP, India's ruling party. Here he is filmed calmly accepting the equivalent of $4,000 in small bills. This is Tehelka's infamous money shot.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL: And here is the famous visual. He's taking it out from his briefcase where the hidden camera was and he's showing the cash in front of the camera.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Tehelka: Sir, this is a small gift, small gift for the New Year party.
Bangaru Laxamn: No, thats
Tehelka: New year party fund, 1 lakh rupees, fine? So what time can I call
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL: And Bangaru Laxman then opens his drawer, accepts the money and puts it back in the drawer, very nonchalantly, I must say.
COHEN: Bangaru Laxman was just one of several senior political figures caught on camera accepting bribes from West End International. The most significant meeting - one that was later to have explosive consequences - was here at the official residence of the Defence Minister, George Fernandes.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Jaya Jaitly: We need help some because he said Look, I can do 50% expense. You do the rest.
Tehelka: Yeah, yeah.
Jaya Jaitly: Whatever contribution we In the interest of the nation. So that well ensure that they dont neglect you. After that its up to you and your product.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL That's Matthew and that's Jaya Jaitly in George Fernandes' house. George Fernandes was then the defence minister of India. He still is now.
COHEN: Jaya Jaitly and George Fernandes both belong to the Samata Party, which is part of the ruling coalition. Jaitly was Party President, and also happens to be Fernandes' partner. She's another about to accept cash.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Tehelka: Can I can I give it to madam?
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL: He's handing over the packet, paying the cash, "Can I give it to Madam?" And he passes the packet to the person to the right of him.
COHEN: Jaitly had accepted 200,000 rupees, or two lakhs, $8,000, from Tehelka's undercover reporter.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Major General Murgai: "So let's go?
Tehelka: That's two lakhs. Two lakhs.
Sulekha: Thank you very much.
Jaya Jaitly: Thank you very much.
TARUN TEJPAL: I don't think anyone can begin to undermine the quality of bravery that was involved in all this. I keep saying had Samuel Matthew been caught out in the Defence Minister's house wired up the way he was, I mean, they would have locked him up and thrown away the key and we would've been able to do nothing about it. Stories that have a cut-off point are stories that can be managed, they can be handled. I mean, what really worried me was this was a story that was going all the way to the top.
COHEN: On March 13, 2001, Tehelka went public with its story. It created an uproar.
NEWS ARCHIVE - NDTV REPORTER: The opposition is scenting blood. It could have huge political repercussions and the issue is going to dominate Parliament for the coming days.
COHEN: Left-wing protesters tried to storm the Parliament. Jaya Jaitly and George Fernandes became objects of ridicule. Along with BJP President Bangaru Laxman, they went on the attack.
NEWS ARCHIVE - GEORGE FERNANDES: I will demand, in Parliament and outside, that these people should immediately be arrested, because I have reasons to believe that they have undermined our national security.
JAYA JAITLY And I do not promote anybody's interests, and whatever is done in this government is done for national interest.
BANGARU LAXMAN I have not done any deal for any things. Somebody was offered money for my party's fund. I have just accepted it, passed on, and which is still pending.
COHEN: Within a few days, the BJP President, the Samata Party President and the Defence Minister, were all forced to stand down.
GEORGE FERNANDES: Upon the morale of the armed forces, and to prevent further damage to our national defence, I have decided to resign from government.
COHEN: Two years later, George Fernandes is back as Defence Minister, and Jaya Jaitly still has her office in his official residence.
SOLDIER: Have you any permission for photography? Show me please.
JAYA JAITLY: Now they claim that they came to do some surreptitious defence deal with me. Here's my workspace, which is shared by many other colleagues and many other people in this room. There are so many workstations. And how on earth would anybody be talking about secret matters like defence deals and bribery and corruption in an atmosphere like this? This has taken me 35 years of my experience working with the craftspeople of India in rural areas.
COHEN: Jaya Jaitly was not someone most Indians expected to see caught up in a scandal. Until Operation West End, she was known largely for her work in handicrafts. Her integrity had never been questioned.
REPORTER: What was your reaction when you first saw the footage of the meeting?
JAYA JAITLY: I was astounded because I hadn't, I didn't recollect it even for a moment, and I said "I, well it must have happened because I'm there and I can recognise my voice." But for instance, they say that they said 2 lakhs, 2 lakhs of rupees and they've stuck these 2 lakhs in there and, ah I have still insisted.
REPORTER: They stuck it in there meaning?
JAYA JAITLY: Superimposed, recorded it later. They never announced any amount of money in front of me. No money was discussed at all.
COHEN: In fact, Tehelka's footage clearly shows Jaitly thanking West End for its donation, explaining that the money would help meet expenses at an upcoming party conference.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Jaya Jaitly: We need some help because he said, "Look I can do 50% expense. You do the rest." So the rest, whatever contribution.
Tehelka: Yeah, yeah. We need your blessing, we need your blessing also for our company.
REPORTER: So this is someone that came in without an appointment, being introduced to you by someone that you barely knew - you weren't at all surprised that he wanted to give a donation to the party?
JAYA JAITLY: I said "Oh" which is a surprise expression of surprise but I don't say "Oh my gosh, how on earth?" You know, I mean, that's silly. Yeah, I said Oh.
COHEN: Jaitly says there's no evidence in the tapes of any wrongdoing by anyone. She's launched a personal crusade against the journalists who she believes were out to get her.
JAYA JAITLY: They call it investigative journalism. It's the furthest possible from the truth. They have taken a hypothesis and gone out to prove it. They have decided that there is corruption in defence procurement and decided that they must now set about talking to people who were not connected with it. I think if you read the whole hundred hours of tape, then you will realise that the conversation was perfectly ordinary, perfectly superficial and not at all secret. The information...
REPORTER: In every case?
JAYA JAITLY: In every case.
COHEN: Tehelka's tapes angered many powerful people who were determined to get even. It didn't take long for the Government to strike back - hard. Tavleen Singh is a leading columnist and political commentator and at the time of the expose, she was a friend of the ruling BJP. Singh was one of many journalists the Government tried to use to attack Tehelka.
TAVLEEN SINGH, POLITICAL COLUMNIST: You know, I had no doubt that what we saw was true. But pretty soon after the story broke, within maybe a week of it breaking, I met senior ministers, senior cabinet ministers in Delhi, who started to say things that made me quite suspicious of what had really gone on. Because it was coming at such a high level in government, I believed them when they said that there were all kinds of surreptitious undercurrents in the story.
COHEN: The Government accused Tehelka of being part of all kinds of wild conspiracies - one minute, the website was called "a stooge of the opposition Congress Party", the next it was supposedly destabilising the Government on behalf of Pakistani intelligence.
TARUN TEJPAL: There wasn't any charge that wasn't flung on us. I think very, very early, some elements in the party took a conscious decision that the thing to do was just try and trash Tehelka as quickly and as soundly as possible. So we faced a terrible propaganda war and it was actually very, very upsetting and galling to be constantly fending off wild charges.
NEWS ARCHIVE - NDTV: Rocked by bribery and corruption exposed on the Tehelka videotapes, losing a defence minister and two party presidents, the establishment begins to fight back. And according to the Tehelka team, the Government and its machinery is using every possible means to discredit Tehelka.
TARUN TEJPAL: We find that there is a concerted slander campaign being launched at Tehelka.com and the three of us.
NDTV: Just as the Tehelka storm seemed to have died down, headlines in today's newspapers have revived the debate.
COHEN: Some of Tehelka's methods have left the website open to criticism. When Jaya Jaitly's party discovered Tehelka had used prostitutes to entertain army officers, it had a scandal of its own to leak to the press.
NEWS A RCHIVE NDTV: But Tehelka's chief says that he has done nothing wrong. He insists that the demand for prostitutes was initiated by the army officers and not by Tehelka.
TARUN TEJPAL: They were forced to do this to guide the investigation on, because obviously in arms deals, these are the kinds of things people, these guys are used to asking for and demanding and getting.
COHEN: The Government did set up an inquiry headed by a retired judge to investigate the allegations of corruption. But one of its four terms of reference called for an investigation of "All aspects relating to the making and publication of the allegations." In other words - Tehelka. In an incredible turnaround, the inquiry ended up investigating the messenger, rather than the message. For the next 18 months, all of Tehelka's remaining resources were spent defending every word in the more than 100 hours of footage it had collected.
ANIRUDDHA BAHAL, TEHELKA JOURNALIST: The only way the system could salvage some honour out of the story was by discrediting us, by impugning some motives to us. I mean, nobody asks Bob Woodward whether his mother was a democratic sympathiser or what his motives were in doing Watergate. I mean, it's simply taken for granted - nobody really goes after the motives - I mean, you question the facts that your story brings out, but that's where your focus should be, nobody was bothered about the facts and they were gunning for us.
COHEN: In the shadow of the Bombay Stock Exchange are two bystanders who bore the full brunt of the government's fury.
SHANKAR SHARMA, TEHELKA INVESTOR: I can tell you, there have been days of pure panic and pure terror and it's not too exaggerated, but every time somebody has knocked at the door or rung the doorbell, we have been thrown into a real, real tizzy. So it's been very, very, very stressful personally. It's almost like somebody let loose a pack of dogs on you and you've just had to fend them off whichever way you could.
COHEN: Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra run First Gobal, once one of Bombay's leading investment banks and the only South Asian company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange. They provided Tehelka with nearly a million dollars in start-up investment.
SHANKAR SHARMA: We are from the investment world - our job is to invest.
COHEN: Within days of the scandal breaking, newspapers were reporting rumours that Operation West End had been part of a conspiracy to crash the stock market. Shankar and Devina soon felt the full weight of the Indian bureaucracy bearing down on them, as Government agencies launched close to two dozen raids on their offices and home.
SHANKAR SHARMA: Just a raid is not really the issue here. People came here not to find out if there is anything wrong or anything to hide - they came here to invent. You know, they will walk into your kitchen sort of, your home accounts, and they will say, "These are all codenamed, sort of code-worded," so if you have four dozen mangoes, they will say, "These are unaccounted payments being codified, you know, being called 'mangoes'." You know, in hindsight, it's very funny but when it's happening, you feel like beating those guys up.
COHEN: Sharma has also been presented with 250 legal summonses. His passport was seized and he was arrested and charged under an act that had been repealed two years before.
SHANKAR SHAMAR: You're just arrested, you're put behind bars and then you get bailed after 2.5 to 3 months. My bail was rejected multiple times. And they used to shout in court, "Your honour, this guy, this man is a serious criminal and he will tamper with evidence and he will kill the witnesses, and he will use strong arm tactics and, and he's..." - that's my first offence by the way, I've never even had a parking ticket in my life.
COHEN: At one point, the Solicitor-General himself appeared in court to oppose Shankar's bail application.
SHANKAR SHAMAR: You see, privately, every single government official has said, "Hey look, we know what we are doing is wrong, but I'm sorry, they are orders from Delhi. The top most officials of the country, the top most ministers of the government are calling us up and saying that you have to find something, if not, frame something, fabricate something, but do something - Gotta get this guy in. Absolutely."
DEVINA: They even used the words that we are only puppets, somebody else is pulling the strings. "I am just signing the order, I have nothing to do with it."
SHANKAR: And we hope that God forgives us. I used to tell them, I hope God doesn't.
COHEN: Most of the conspiracy theories the Government has spread about Tehelka defy any kind of logic. But nothing it seems is too far-fetched for the former Samata Party President to believe.
JAYA JAITLY: I truly believe that Tehelka has been used by mercenaries for such people, because it's not Shankar Sharma who's given them the money, it's come from elsewhere.
REPORTER: Sorry?
JAYA JAITLY: The money has not come from Shankar Sharma.
REPORTER: The money, the investment in Tehelka?
JAYA JAITLY: That's right - it has come from Mauritius and it came into their Mauritius account from a person in Madras - all this has come in the affidavit of the government.
REPORTER: For what purpose?
JAYA JAITLY: Well, I don't know, to sabotage the government, sabotage the ministry, sabotage George Fernandes, and to use me as a puppet or a pawn in this.
TARUN TEJPAL: I think Jaya has just completely run amok. In my own kind of distant way, I don't know Jaya at all but I've seen the way she's reacted. I've seen the kind of dishonesties she's voiced in public again and again and again, and I know many of her friends who really worry for her and the kind of things she says and does these days. I think Jaya's problem really, the way I see it is she's no longer the person she thinks she is, you know, and when the gap between who you are and who you think you are becomes so wide, I think you just keep falling through it, and Jaya's someone who keeps falling through that gap all the time.
REPORTER: How do you explain the government reaction - that the level of vindictiveness involved?
TAVLEEN SINGH, COLUMNIST: The only explanation I can come up with is that somebody really high up in Government was really upset by the Tehelka story. The obvious person is George Fernandes, because he lost his job and Jaya Jaitly was one of the people seen taking money, and here were these sort of the Mother Teresas of Indian politics being exposed in this way. But I think it could be higher up, you know, I hesitate to mention names - maybe there was somebody in the Prime Minister's office who got very upset, because the Prime Minister's son-in-law was mentioned by people on these tapes.
TARUN TEJPAL: In a curious way, what has happened post the story is a far bigger story than the story itself. That tells us more about the Indian state and India than the story itself, I mean, the story took eight months, it's been 20 months, we are dealing with the fallout of the story, you know so the blast was wonderful but the radiation has been far more devastating - I mean it's carried on, it's still carrying on.
COHEN: Tehelka's editor hopes he doesn't have to wait for a change of Government to revive his website. In the next couple of months, he's planning to launch a subscription service to exploit what is still one of the best-known media brands in India. Despite two years of vilification, Tehelka has become a byword for the fight against corruption.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL, TEHELKA JOURNALIST: A friend of mine sent me an email from Bangalore. She overheard two woman labourers who were digging the road, talking about Tehelka and so she stopped by on the street to listen to what one woman was telling the other. And she was explaining what Tehelka is to the other women, and she was saying that Tehelka is this big electronic machine that they have made in Delhi, and if you stand in front of it, the machine will tell you how much corruption you have done. And for me, that's the most sweetest and best compliment that I could ever get for a story.
COHEN: Tarun Tejpal is Editor-in-Chief of Tehelka, a news and current affairs website responsible for some of the most remarkable scoops in Indian journalism. Out of the 115 staff Tehelka used to employ, less than 10 - unpaid - now remain. Tehelka has been crushed by a relentless campaign of government harassment.
TARUN TEJPAL: We had a terrific team here and I think we had, most of them had the kind of feeling that crew members have when the ship is sinking, you know. You know, you think, "It's not gunna sink, it's not gunna sink - we'll get by, we'll get by."
COHEN: This is the footage that rocked India's political establishment and earned Tehelka formidable enemies - grainy pictures of high-ranking army officers gratefully accepting bribes.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles) Tehelka: Sir, this is a small gift for the new year party.
Bangaru Laxman: No, thats
Tehelka: New year party fund, 1 lakh rupees, fine? So what time can I call?
COHEN: The leader of India's ruling party pocketing another stack of cash. Posing as arms dealers, Tehelka's journalists stalked the corridors of power with hidden cameras, uncovering a network of graft. When their story was made public, it claimed the head of the defence minister and two party presidents. Now Tehelka is paying the price for taking on the government of India.
TARUN TEJPAL: The truth was, there were just one or two of us fighting this propaganda war, whereas the government was deploying the entire establishment to not only witch-hunt us - I mean, every agency of the government was unleashed on us - enforcement directorate, intelligence bureau, CBI and company board, IRS, income tax - there was no agency of the government that was not unleashed on us.
JAYA JAITLY, FORMER SAMATA PARTY PRESIDENT: Tehelka are buccaneer journalists. They have no sense of responsibility and they don't know what journalism is. They got away with the cricket, so they thought that they would make a whole lot of money and become famous and claim that they can, with the strength of their great exposes, knock-off governments and very powerful people.
COHEN: Tehelka first shot to prominence in May, 2000, when it launched its expose of match fixing in cricket, "Fallen Heroes". Secretly filmed conversations with cricketers caused a worldwide sensation. In cricket-crazed India, Tehelka became a household name.
TARUN TEJPAL: So we decided we would run a sting operation and we found a lot of the big players and administrators happily singing about match fixing when they thought they were off-camera, and that for us actually nailed the truth of match fixing. It lead to two inquiries, it created a huge uproar and I think it led to a global clean-up in cricket.
COHEN: For its next trick, Tehelka turned its attention from cricket to the even murkier world of arms dealers and defence procurement. Once again, hidden cameras were put to devastating use.
TEHELKA VIDEO OPERATION WEST END VIDEO TITLE A story of how the suitcase people are compromising Indian Defence: It all started with Senior Section Officer Sashi Menon, in the Ministry of Defence, wanting to make some money from arms dealers. We at Tehelka.com floated a fictitious arms manufacturing company based in London, called West End International.
TARUN TEJPAL: The truth is, if you live in Delhi, each of us knows that all the fancy farm houses, all the fancy Mercedes, are owned by defence middlemen. So part of the whole thing was to crack this whole story open about defence deals and pay-offs, and that's how the stories began to germinate, that "Let's give it a shot. This is this kind of holy cow, but we all know it's completely rotten. Let's see what we can come up with."
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Tehelka: Sir, your mind is there with us.
Brigadier Iqbal Singh: Mind is there, of course.
Tehelka: Please, 50,000 is there. (Money being handed over and put in suitcase)
COHEN: A Tehelka journalist posing as an arms dealer set about hawking hand-held thermal cameras to the Indian Army. He soon discovered that every favour has its price - anything upwards from a bottle of the best-quality scotch.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Major General Ahluwalia: Saala, if you come to my house to meet me on Diwali, you can't talk without bringing Blue Label. If you are talking about making a couple of crores of rupees, you can't give me bloody Black Label also. Let's be very clear about it.
Tehelka: True fact, sir.
COHEN: Their initial contact was a clerk in the Ministry of Defence, who introduced them to a Colonel, who introduced them to a Lieutenant-Colonel, who introduced them to a Brigadier, and so on. Every one of them on the take.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Major General Ahluwalia: You have to create a network and let me tell you it has got, you know, because the carrot at the other end is big for everybody. You need very deep pockets. Let's be very clear about it.
Colonel Sayal: No, that is understood.
COHEN: Working undercover for eight months, reporter Samuel Matthews secretly filmed serving and retired army officers, defence bureaucrats, middlemen and political functionaries.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Sulekha: This is Samuel Mathew.
COHEN: Somehow, despite several comical blunders, his cover wasn't blown.
TARUN TEJPAL: There's a point at which Samuel Matthews is asked, "Which bank does your company bank with?" and he says, "Thomas Cook". There's another point where he's asked, "Where is your company headquarters in England?" and he says "Manchester United". He just said the things that came to his mind and sounded plausible, you know. And I'm here to say, it's a miracle that he didn't say you know, "My MD is David Beckham." I mean, he would've probably got away with it.
COHEN: It was here, in great secrecy, that Matthews' footage was kept. Aniruddha Bahal was the journalist in charge of running Operation West End. A veteran of the match-fixing story, he'd never expected this investigation to go for so long or to reveal so much.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL, TEHELKA JOURNALIST: When it started off, it was like any other story. I mean, probability of the story going anywhere was maybe 5%, 10%, and there were lots of things we could have done much better, but we didn't have that benefit - it was only, the story grew incrementally in value over the months and 3, 4 months into it we realised, I mean, I realised, "Wow, this is something, going to be something." Yeah, this is the place where Matthew's meeting Bangaru Laxman. This is the second meeting.
COHEN: Bangaru Laxman was President of the BJP, India's ruling party. Here he is filmed calmly accepting the equivalent of $4,000 in small bills. This is Tehelka's infamous money shot.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL: And here is the famous visual. He's taking it out from his briefcase where the hidden camera was and he's showing the cash in front of the camera.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Tehelka: Sir, this is a small gift, small gift for the New Year party.
Bangaru Laxamn: No, thats
Tehelka: New year party fund, 1 lakh rupees, fine? So what time can I call
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL: And Bangaru Laxman then opens his drawer, accepts the money and puts it back in the drawer, very nonchalantly, I must say.
COHEN: Bangaru Laxman was just one of several senior political figures caught on camera accepting bribes from West End International. The most significant meeting - one that was later to have explosive consequences - was here at the official residence of the Defence Minister, George Fernandes.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Jaya Jaitly: We need help some because he said Look, I can do 50% expense. You do the rest.
Tehelka: Yeah, yeah.
Jaya Jaitly: Whatever contribution we In the interest of the nation. So that well ensure that they dont neglect you. After that its up to you and your product.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL That's Matthew and that's Jaya Jaitly in George Fernandes' house. George Fernandes was then the defence minister of India. He still is now.
COHEN: Jaya Jaitly and George Fernandes both belong to the Samata Party, which is part of the ruling coalition. Jaitly was Party President, and also happens to be Fernandes' partner. She's another about to accept cash.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Tehelka: Can I can I give it to madam?
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL: He's handing over the packet, paying the cash, "Can I give it to Madam?" And he passes the packet to the person to the right of him.
COHEN: Jaitly had accepted 200,000 rupees, or two lakhs, $8,000, from Tehelka's undercover reporter.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Major General Murgai: "So let's go?
Tehelka: That's two lakhs. Two lakhs.
Sulekha: Thank you very much.
Jaya Jaitly: Thank you very much.
TARUN TEJPAL: I don't think anyone can begin to undermine the quality of bravery that was involved in all this. I keep saying had Samuel Matthew been caught out in the Defence Minister's house wired up the way he was, I mean, they would have locked him up and thrown away the key and we would've been able to do nothing about it. Stories that have a cut-off point are stories that can be managed, they can be handled. I mean, what really worried me was this was a story that was going all the way to the top.
COHEN: On March 13, 2001, Tehelka went public with its story. It created an uproar.
NEWS ARCHIVE - NDTV REPORTER: The opposition is scenting blood. It could have huge political repercussions and the issue is going to dominate Parliament for the coming days.
COHEN: Left-wing protesters tried to storm the Parliament. Jaya Jaitly and George Fernandes became objects of ridicule. Along with BJP President Bangaru Laxman, they went on the attack.
NEWS ARCHIVE - GEORGE FERNANDES: I will demand, in Parliament and outside, that these people should immediately be arrested, because I have reasons to believe that they have undermined our national security.
JAYA JAITLY And I do not promote anybody's interests, and whatever is done in this government is done for national interest.
BANGARU LAXMAN I have not done any deal for any things. Somebody was offered money for my party's fund. I have just accepted it, passed on, and which is still pending.
COHEN: Within a few days, the BJP President, the Samata Party President and the Defence Minister, were all forced to stand down.
GEORGE FERNANDES: Upon the morale of the armed forces, and to prevent further damage to our national defence, I have decided to resign from government.
COHEN: Two years later, George Fernandes is back as Defence Minister, and Jaya Jaitly still has her office in his official residence.
SOLDIER: Have you any permission for photography? Show me please.
JAYA JAITLY: Now they claim that they came to do some surreptitious defence deal with me. Here's my workspace, which is shared by many other colleagues and many other people in this room. There are so many workstations. And how on earth would anybody be talking about secret matters like defence deals and bribery and corruption in an atmosphere like this? This has taken me 35 years of my experience working with the craftspeople of India in rural areas.
COHEN: Jaya Jaitly was not someone most Indians expected to see caught up in a scandal. Until Operation West End, she was known largely for her work in handicrafts. Her integrity had never been questioned.
REPORTER: What was your reaction when you first saw the footage of the meeting?
JAYA JAITLY: I was astounded because I hadn't, I didn't recollect it even for a moment, and I said "I, well it must have happened because I'm there and I can recognise my voice." But for instance, they say that they said 2 lakhs, 2 lakhs of rupees and they've stuck these 2 lakhs in there and, ah I have still insisted.
REPORTER: They stuck it in there meaning?
JAYA JAITLY: Superimposed, recorded it later. They never announced any amount of money in front of me. No money was discussed at all.
COHEN: In fact, Tehelka's footage clearly shows Jaitly thanking West End for its donation, explaining that the money would help meet expenses at an upcoming party conference.
HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE (Subtitles): Jaya Jaitly: We need some help because he said, "Look I can do 50% expense. You do the rest." So the rest, whatever contribution.
Tehelka: Yeah, yeah. We need your blessing, we need your blessing also for our company.
REPORTER: So this is someone that came in without an appointment, being introduced to you by someone that you barely knew - you weren't at all surprised that he wanted to give a donation to the party?
JAYA JAITLY: I said "Oh" which is a surprise expression of surprise but I don't say "Oh my gosh, how on earth?" You know, I mean, that's silly. Yeah, I said Oh.
COHEN: Jaitly says there's no evidence in the tapes of any wrongdoing by anyone. She's launched a personal crusade against the journalists who she believes were out to get her.
JAYA JAITLY: They call it investigative journalism. It's the furthest possible from the truth. They have taken a hypothesis and gone out to prove it. They have decided that there is corruption in defence procurement and decided that they must now set about talking to people who were not connected with it. I think if you read the whole hundred hours of tape, then you will realise that the conversation was perfectly ordinary, perfectly superficial and not at all secret. The information...
REPORTER: In every case?
JAYA JAITLY: In every case.
COHEN: Tehelka's tapes angered many powerful people who were determined to get even. It didn't take long for the Government to strike back - hard. Tavleen Singh is a leading columnist and political commentator and at the time of the expose, she was a friend of the ruling BJP. Singh was one of many journalists the Government tried to use to attack Tehelka.
TAVLEEN SINGH, POLITICAL COLUMNIST: You know, I had no doubt that what we saw was true. But pretty soon after the story broke, within maybe a week of it breaking, I met senior ministers, senior cabinet ministers in Delhi, who started to say things that made me quite suspicious of what had really gone on. Because it was coming at such a high level in government, I believed them when they said that there were all kinds of surreptitious undercurrents in the story.
COHEN: The Government accused Tehelka of being part of all kinds of wild conspiracies - one minute, the website was called "a stooge of the opposition Congress Party", the next it was supposedly destabilising the Government on behalf of Pakistani intelligence.
TARUN TEJPAL: There wasn't any charge that wasn't flung on us. I think very, very early, some elements in the party took a conscious decision that the thing to do was just try and trash Tehelka as quickly and as soundly as possible. So we faced a terrible propaganda war and it was actually very, very upsetting and galling to be constantly fending off wild charges.
NEWS ARCHIVE - NDTV: Rocked by bribery and corruption exposed on the Tehelka videotapes, losing a defence minister and two party presidents, the establishment begins to fight back. And according to the Tehelka team, the Government and its machinery is using every possible means to discredit Tehelka.
TARUN TEJPAL: We find that there is a concerted slander campaign being launched at Tehelka.com and the three of us.
NDTV: Just as the Tehelka storm seemed to have died down, headlines in today's newspapers have revived the debate.
COHEN: Some of Tehelka's methods have left the website open to criticism. When Jaya Jaitly's party discovered Tehelka had used prostitutes to entertain army officers, it had a scandal of its own to leak to the press.
NEWS A RCHIVE NDTV: But Tehelka's chief says that he has done nothing wrong. He insists that the demand for prostitutes was initiated by the army officers and not by Tehelka.
TARUN TEJPAL: They were forced to do this to guide the investigation on, because obviously in arms deals, these are the kinds of things people, these guys are used to asking for and demanding and getting.
COHEN: The Government did set up an inquiry headed by a retired judge to investigate the allegations of corruption. But one of its four terms of reference called for an investigation of "All aspects relating to the making and publication of the allegations." In other words - Tehelka. In an incredible turnaround, the inquiry ended up investigating the messenger, rather than the message. For the next 18 months, all of Tehelka's remaining resources were spent defending every word in the more than 100 hours of footage it had collected.
ANIRUDDHA BAHAL, TEHELKA JOURNALIST: The only way the system could salvage some honour out of the story was by discrediting us, by impugning some motives to us. I mean, nobody asks Bob Woodward whether his mother was a democratic sympathiser or what his motives were in doing Watergate. I mean, it's simply taken for granted - nobody really goes after the motives - I mean, you question the facts that your story brings out, but that's where your focus should be, nobody was bothered about the facts and they were gunning for us.
COHEN: In the shadow of the Bombay Stock Exchange are two bystanders who bore the full brunt of the government's fury.
SHANKAR SHARMA, TEHELKA INVESTOR: I can tell you, there have been days of pure panic and pure terror and it's not too exaggerated, but every time somebody has knocked at the door or rung the doorbell, we have been thrown into a real, real tizzy. So it's been very, very, very stressful personally. It's almost like somebody let loose a pack of dogs on you and you've just had to fend them off whichever way you could.
COHEN: Shankar Sharma and Devina Mehra run First Gobal, once one of Bombay's leading investment banks and the only South Asian company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange. They provided Tehelka with nearly a million dollars in start-up investment.
SHANKAR SHARMA: We are from the investment world - our job is to invest.
COHEN: Within days of the scandal breaking, newspapers were reporting rumours that Operation West End had been part of a conspiracy to crash the stock market. Shankar and Devina soon felt the full weight of the Indian bureaucracy bearing down on them, as Government agencies launched close to two dozen raids on their offices and home.
SHANKAR SHARMA: Just a raid is not really the issue here. People came here not to find out if there is anything wrong or anything to hide - they came here to invent. You know, they will walk into your kitchen sort of, your home accounts, and they will say, "These are all codenamed, sort of code-worded," so if you have four dozen mangoes, they will say, "These are unaccounted payments being codified, you know, being called 'mangoes'." You know, in hindsight, it's very funny but when it's happening, you feel like beating those guys up.
COHEN: Sharma has also been presented with 250 legal summonses. His passport was seized and he was arrested and charged under an act that had been repealed two years before.
SHANKAR SHAMAR: You're just arrested, you're put behind bars and then you get bailed after 2.5 to 3 months. My bail was rejected multiple times. And they used to shout in court, "Your honour, this guy, this man is a serious criminal and he will tamper with evidence and he will kill the witnesses, and he will use strong arm tactics and, and he's..." - that's my first offence by the way, I've never even had a parking ticket in my life.
COHEN: At one point, the Solicitor-General himself appeared in court to oppose Shankar's bail application.
SHANKAR SHAMAR: You see, privately, every single government official has said, "Hey look, we know what we are doing is wrong, but I'm sorry, they are orders from Delhi. The top most officials of the country, the top most ministers of the government are calling us up and saying that you have to find something, if not, frame something, fabricate something, but do something - Gotta get this guy in. Absolutely."
DEVINA: They even used the words that we are only puppets, somebody else is pulling the strings. "I am just signing the order, I have nothing to do with it."
SHANKAR: And we hope that God forgives us. I used to tell them, I hope God doesn't.
COHEN: Most of the conspiracy theories the Government has spread about Tehelka defy any kind of logic. But nothing it seems is too far-fetched for the former Samata Party President to believe.
JAYA JAITLY: I truly believe that Tehelka has been used by mercenaries for such people, because it's not Shankar Sharma who's given them the money, it's come from elsewhere.
REPORTER: Sorry?
JAYA JAITLY: The money has not come from Shankar Sharma.
REPORTER: The money, the investment in Tehelka?
JAYA JAITLY: That's right - it has come from Mauritius and it came into their Mauritius account from a person in Madras - all this has come in the affidavit of the government.
REPORTER: For what purpose?
JAYA JAITLY: Well, I don't know, to sabotage the government, sabotage the ministry, sabotage George Fernandes, and to use me as a puppet or a pawn in this.
TARUN TEJPAL: I think Jaya has just completely run amok. In my own kind of distant way, I don't know Jaya at all but I've seen the way she's reacted. I've seen the kind of dishonesties she's voiced in public again and again and again, and I know many of her friends who really worry for her and the kind of things she says and does these days. I think Jaya's problem really, the way I see it is she's no longer the person she thinks she is, you know, and when the gap between who you are and who you think you are becomes so wide, I think you just keep falling through it, and Jaya's someone who keeps falling through that gap all the time.
REPORTER: How do you explain the government reaction - that the level of vindictiveness involved?
TAVLEEN SINGH, COLUMNIST: The only explanation I can come up with is that somebody really high up in Government was really upset by the Tehelka story. The obvious person is George Fernandes, because he lost his job and Jaya Jaitly was one of the people seen taking money, and here were these sort of the Mother Teresas of Indian politics being exposed in this way. But I think it could be higher up, you know, I hesitate to mention names - maybe there was somebody in the Prime Minister's office who got very upset, because the Prime Minister's son-in-law was mentioned by people on these tapes.
TARUN TEJPAL: In a curious way, what has happened post the story is a far bigger story than the story itself. That tells us more about the Indian state and India than the story itself, I mean, the story took eight months, it's been 20 months, we are dealing with the fallout of the story, you know so the blast was wonderful but the radiation has been far more devastating - I mean it's carried on, it's still carrying on.
COHEN: Tehelka's editor hopes he doesn't have to wait for a change of Government to revive his website. In the next couple of months, he's planning to launch a subscription service to exploit what is still one of the best-known media brands in India. Despite two years of vilification, Tehelka has become a byword for the fight against corruption.
ANIRRUDDHA BAHAL, TEHELKA JOURNALIST: A friend of mine sent me an email from Bangalore. She overheard two woman labourers who were digging the road, talking about Tehelka and so she stopped by on the street to listen to what one woman was telling the other. And she was explaining what Tehelka is to the other women, and she was saying that Tehelka is this big electronic machine that they have made in Delhi, and if you stand in front of it, the machine will tell you how much corruption you have done. And for me, that's the most sweetest and best compliment that I could ever get for a story.