Madhu Trehan makes an appeal for free and fair journalism via her book on Tehelka’s operations

Wednesday night saw an unlikely gathering of people at the likely setting of Olive Bar and Kitchen at Mahalaxmi Racecourse to listen to veteran journalist Madhu Trehan as she read out from her new book Prism Me a Lie, Tell me a Truth - Tehelka as Metaphor. Trehan was commissioned in 2002 by Roli Books to write a book on a happening that became a landmark in the history of journalist practice in India — Tehelka magazine’s Operation West End which uncovered malpractices and siphoning of hundreds of crores worth of funds during defense procurements in 2001. After six years of painstaking research and going through piles of charge-sheets, interrogation records and 40 exhausting interviews, Trehan is finally out with her 587-page book.

“When I began researching, I thought I could finish the book in six months. But when I got into it, I realised just how much there was to look into,” she explains. Her interesting audience comprises Adi Godrej, Tavleen Singh, Queenie Dhody and Rahul Bose among others.

The saga narrated is one of a near Kafkaesque nightmare. Using spy-cams, disguised as arms dealers, Tehelka journalists uncovered a fraud much like the Fodder Scam or the Bofors Scandal. But the then-ruling NDA government, caught on the wrong foot, quickly turned its wrath on Tehelka. What followed were exhausting interrogations and court hearings of Tehelka’s journalists and the subsequent imprisonment of the magazine’s funder Shankar Sharma, for alleged I-T irregularities.

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