Wednesday's edition of Afternoon Despatch & Courier, an otherwise non-controversial family paper, set all of South Mumbai talking--it carried an impassioned letter by CEO Farzana Contractor divulging a spat between her and its majority stakeholder, politician/industrialist Kamal Morarka (he owns 75 per cent of the shares as opposed to Contractor's 25).

There was more to come the next day. A leading English daily carried an advertisement by Couriers Publications Pvt. Ltd announcing the sacking of the paper's CEO.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Contractor said trouble started after pictures of her being felicitated with the Giants Award appeared in Afternoon Despatch & Courier with the caption describing her as the editor. On Friday, Contractor got a letter from Morarka asking her to publish a corrigendum since she was technically not the editor of the paper.

The corrigendum did not appear as Contractor said she was rushing off to France for an assignment for Upper Crust of which she is editor. In her defence, Contractor said, "You see, I had written to him that I was scheduled to go out of town and requested an appointment when I was back."

However, she said, on September 24, four men stepped in with a letter from Morarka and declared themselves "the new management" and started convincing the staff to "change flanks".

Morarka stood his ground. "After Mark Manuel resigned as editor, there has been no editor. I sent her a letter asking her to carry the corrigendum and she did not. So I asked her to resign," he said, adding, "Farzana is the CEO and while she may have been functioning as a journalist, she can't call herself the editor. Behram and I were introduced by Bakul Patel and we started the paper together. Farzana was an ad executive and seeing her enthusiasm, I promoted her to CEO."

... contd.