On Thursday, rediff.com carried the first part of Tarun Tejpal's interview with Sheela Bhatt. In this second and concluding part, the editor-in-chief of tehelka.com speaks about the porous Indian defence establishment which has compromised the country's security.

You had to issue a retraction on your company's share-holding...

No. I issued all the details at an open press conference. I issued the company's shareholding, background and names of its directors.

Were your directors aware of your story?

Nobody was. Nobody knew till the night before we broke the story. Before I broke the story, I spoke to two people. I won't name them. They were neither journalists nor politicians. Just before we broke the story, I spoke to another five or six people.

At 9am, my editors came in. They started making phone calls to the media about the 2 o'clock press conference. The previous Saturday I had asked Aniruddha [Bahal] if the film would be ready by Monday. He said yes. The editing was in process for eight weeks -- 88 hours of tape had to be transcribed.

Fifteen people worked for 24 hours, round the clock, to transcribe the tapes. It's a tribute to their commitment that no one leaked it. It's an incredible thing. On Sunday evening we booked a hall at the Imperial Hotel. They gave me the tape on Monday at 3.30pm. I watched it till 12.30am. I sat at my computer to write the lead piece. At 4.30am, I went home, slept at 5am and woke up by 7.30am. Between 9am and 1.30pm, I met 4-5 people and our editors and journalists made the calls to the media.

We told them that we were screening an investigative documentary. You should have seen what we were feeling [then]. We were very scared that the government would pre-empt us, if they came to know the nature of the story. We were extremely quiet and secretive.

One of the persons I did call on -- since you asked me -- was our director Amitabh Bachchan. I called him at around 10.30 on Tuesday morning. I told him: "We are breaking a big story, big enough to really shake the establishment." And he asked me, "Would you like to tell me what the story is?" I said, "No. I don't want to." He said, "Fine, that's okay." He is a complete gentleman. He is amazing. I have not spoken to him since then. That's it.

V S Naipaul called me three days later. The British newspapers were full of it. He asked me about the story. I went and met Khushwant Singh, another director in Buffalo Network, almost after a week. Nobody knew.

Are your directors pleased?

Doesn't matter. We did our job. I said at the press conference that 'this organization is run by journalists, managed by journalists and owned by journalists. We followed a story, which turned out to be good. We broke the story, and now that the story has been broken, we are out of it. Our role ends here. The politics in it doesn't interest us. We have nothing against the BJP or Samata Party.'

What was your motivation?

It was purely journalistic.

Have you fulfilled your aim?

I think I am very pleased. I give 8 or 9 out of 10 to this story. We exposed the incredible compromise in India's defence procurements. I think that's something we have told -- 100 per cent. That was the end. The story was not made on politicians, not even on political parties. The story had no other motive except exposing the incredible vulnerability of national defence.

Some points about your journalism -- one, R K Jain and R K Gupta don't seem to have much credibility -- so lots of meat in their talk is not credible.

Not true? Hang on.

And second point is -- as Arun Jaitley says -- after five drinks anyone can brag about anything.

What would Arun Jaitley say, baba?

Jaswant Singh told his party MPs that people who are taking money are not in a position of influence, they were not effective in clinching deals. The BJP considers it [the expose] half-baked investigation because you are heavily dependent on the Jains and Guptas who are no heavyweights.

What? Generals taking money? I don't think so at all. We have shown that generals in key position are taking money to facilitate deals. We have shown the president of the BJP taking money to facilitate deals. We have shown that the defence minister's own house is being used by arms dealers to contract deals. I don't think you can get more than that. And all this is being done with 50,000 and 10 lakh rupees.

Let's assume, if we would have been genuine arms dealers and if we had 10 crores [Rs 100 million] with us, we would have opened the system -- straight, we don't know where we would have ended up. We had just 10.5 lakh, and this is the amount of corruption we have shown. Show me one such story in the history of journalism that has revealed this kind of corruption so graphically and clearly. What's the legal position of the government?

George Fernandes has said in Parliament that he had conducted an inquiry, which has shown that not a single middleman exists. Look at the film, it's crawling with middlemen. We have defence middlemen who are proud to be defence middlemen. They openly flaunt the fact that they are defence middlemen. They promise to take you to different places where you can get deals. They take you to generals.

But many times they just brag.

They are not. Read the transcripts.

In Delhi's political lobby one meets many such characters.

Are you being a politician or a journalist? Have you read the sequence? How do we reach Jaya Jaitly? There are two different middlemen. They say, 'We will take you to Jaya Jaitly if you pay me so much money. And if the deal is done, so much will go to Jaya Jaitly.'

And in the next scene, what do they do? They actually take them [the correspondents] to Jaya Jaitly. Our correspondent asks, "Where will you take me?" He says, "I'll take you to the defence minister's house to meet her." Is that not corruption?

In Delhi there are such fixers...

They are not just talking, they actually take you, boss. Is this not compromising your defence?

But actual scams do not happen like this, right?

Actual scams... If you had 50 lakh or 10 crore, won't you reach an actual scam? [Actual scam pe aap pahunchte ke nahi?] Tell me? They [arms dealers] took you to the defence minister's home. They arranged a meeting with Jaya Jaitly. They talked about the defence deal. You also paid Rs 2 lakh. They came out of the meeting and took their cut also. These are the guys who do the deals. They not only just brag, they do the deals.

If you would have lived in Delhi long enough, every damn farmhouse in the city is owned by defence dealers and middlemen. Where does the money come from? Not through bragging. It comes because they do the deals and make the money. It is so obvious in the tapes. And mind you, R K Jain is not a nobody. He is the treasurer of the Samata Party. And the defence minister is a member of the Samata Party.

If R K Jain says something about Jaya Jaitly or George Fernandes, he has an official locus standi. If Bangaru Laxman says something about Brajesh Mishra, he has a locus standi. He is president of the ruling party. R K Jain is not just somebody. He is a defence dealer. Defence dealers have been shown because they clearly show the nexus that exists. It's not about bragging. I say discount the bragging.

Would you agree there are many such Jains and Guptas in Delhi who talk similarly and make wild claims?

The point is not that. The point is that they show that they can do it. Obviously they are not bragging. Even if you assume they were bragging and let's stop for a moment -- we were told by the honourable minister that no defence middlemen exist, how come we see them crawling out in the film? They are all defence middlemen. They are operating openly.

Continued: 'Politicians are indifferent to allegations. With such a graphic video they are still denying the story.'

Design: Dominic Xavier

The Complete Coverage | Defence sites

Back to top

Do tell us what you think of this interview