Editor’s note: We are delighted to have Jaskirat Singh Bawa write our explainer for the Tarun Tejpal ruling—a case he has followed for years as a former journalist and newsroom manager.
The TLDR: The former Tehelka editor has been acquitted of all rape charges—and the ruling has made many very angry. The 527-page judgement has parts that are enraging, surprising and at times, worrying. But it makes crystal-clear that in a court of law, the great burden of proof remains on the rape accuser—which she apparently failed to meet to the satisfaction of the judge. Here’s a breakdown of its highlights. (We apologise in advance for the headache-inducing long-winded quotes from the ruling.)
The accused: Tarun Tejpal is Tehelka magazine's founder-editor, a prominent journalist and a novelist. Tejpal launched Tehelka in 2000 after decades of working in top publications like Indian Express, India Today and Outlook. At Tehelka, Tejpal broke some of the biggest investigative stories in Indian journalism and polarised the media community by using "sting operations.” The biggest one you may have heard about: Operation West End.
The location: In 2013, Tehelka organised the third edition of ‘THiNKFest’—an event the magazine marketed as “India’s premier intellectual event” hosted at the Grand Hyatt in Goa. The glittering cast of speakers included Amitabh Bachchan, Robert De Niro, Farhan Akhtar, Jay Panda, Nandan Nilekani and others.
The allegation: On the sidelines of this event—on the evenings of November 7 and 8—Tejpal allegedly sexually assaulted a female colleague inside the elevator of the hotel. The woman was a young journalist working for Tehelka at the time and was also known to Tejpal’s family.
The context: While the Tarun Tejpal rape allegations case hit the headlines five years before India’s MeToo reckoning, it occurred less than a year after the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder case. There was a charged atmosphere around the issue of crimes of violence and sexual assault against women.
The ruling: Seven years and six months after the allegations first came to light, Tejpal was exonerated of all charges. The verdict was delivered by Goa district court’s Additional Sessions Judge Kshama Joshi on Friday, May 21.
Here’s a quick timeline of the past seven-odd years:
Because it includes certain remarks that have been read as a classic case of victim-blaming.
One: The ‘normative behaviour’ line referred to the fact that she was seen smiling in party photos—”not disturbed, reserved, terrified or traumatised in any manner”—after the alleged assault:
“It is extremely revealing that the prosecutrix’s (victim) account neither demonstrates any kind of normative behaviour on her own part – that a prosecutrix of sexual assault on consecutive two nights might plausibly show nor does it show any such behaviour on the part of the accused.”
Two: The judge also flagged that she shared her account with men rather than women:
“Even if one allows for the implausible fact that the prosecutrix would seek out three male colleagues who were not intimate friends of hers to share details of the alleged incident while making absolutely no mention of it to her female roommates… including her closest friend at Tehelka or her mother, nothing can explain the absolute normalcy of her behaviour and state of mind inside the privacy of her own room… the colleague sharing this small hotel room with her discovers two weeks later that the prosecutrix claims to have been sexually assaulted on those very nights!”
Three: The judge also questioned her WhatsApp messages sharing her location with Tejpal after the alleged assault:
“The prosecutrix sending the above message to the accused proactively without any attempt by him to ask her where she was, and her sending the same message thrice in the span of a very few minutes, clearly establishes that the prosecutrix was not traumatised nor terrified.”
The backlash: Social media was flooded with posts that expressed rage at the idea women have to behave appropriately ‘traumatised’ after being assaulted. As one journalist tweeted:
“Any memo available from the court that'd tell us women "how to behave after a sexual assault"? Pls send us all a copy before watching predators walk scott free again.”
That’s because of a series of contentious “apology email(s)” exchanged between the accuser, Tejpal and Tehelka Managing Editor Shoma Chaudhury—which were leaked on Twitter in November, 2013. Here’s how it played out:
First: The complainant sent an e-mail to Chaudhury detailing the circumstances of sexual assault, and her subsequent interactions with Tejpal over text messages. “I have no doubt that Mr Tejpal was trying to establish his innocence in a devious manner….This was no banter, it was most clearly sexual assault.”
Next: Tejpal emailed the accuser a day after she formally complained to Chaudhury, writing:
“This is easily the worst moment of my life — something ostensibly playful gone so horribly wrong, damaging all that I hold dear in life, from people to principles. I ask you to forgive and forget it. I will meet your mom and apologise to her too—and (name withheld) if you so wish.”
Then: The accuser responded to that email, writing:
“…the moment you laid a hand on me, I started begging you to stop. I invoked every single person and principle that was important to us - (Tejpal's daughter, wife, Chaudhury) - the fact that you were my employer, to make you stop. You refused to listen. In fact, you went ahead and decided to molest me again the following night.”
This led to: the ‘formal apology’ from Tejpal’s email address to the accuser, and it said:
“It wrenches me beyond describing, therefore, to accept that I have violated that long-standing relationship of trust and respect between us and I apologise unconditionally for the shameful lapse of judgement that led me to attempt a sexual liaison with you on two occasions….despite your clear reluctance that you did not want such attention from me.”
Importantly, this email was signed off with the following line: “If an apology can heal, please consider this an unconditional one.”
Finally: In an email to his deputy Shoma Chaudhury—with the subject line that read ‘Atonement’— Tejpal offered to step down from his position for six months, Tejpal called his act a “bad lapse of judgment, an awful misreading of the situation” and said he must “do the penance that lacerates me.”
This is where the judge hauled up the case investigating officer (IO) from Goa Police.
The lift: The complainant had alleged that Tejpal forcibly restrained her in the hotel lift and assaulted her—for about two minutes.
The CCTV footage: The judgement noted that the IO only gave directions to seize footage from the second and ground floors—omitting the first floor where the two of them exited the lift. Then the ruling accuses the officer of deliberately tampering with the first floor evidence:
"The IO viewed vital CCTV footage of the guest lifts on the first floor and knowing that the said CCTV footage shows the accused and prosecutrix exiting the lift during the relevant two minutes on the first floor and that the same would exonerate the accused and despite the fact that the DVR containing the CCTV footage should have been attached by the IO at the earliest to preserve the crucial footage, deliberately delayed the seizure of the DVR and in the meanwhile destroyed the CCTV footage of first floor, thereby destroying clear proof of the accused's defence.”
The Goa government has filed a High Court appeal challenging the verdict. Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said, “This is injustice meted out to a woman. In Goa, we will not accept this…With the kind of evidence and documents we had in the case, it could not have led to an acquittal. This is very sad.”
The judgement is available here. LiveLaw and Indian Express offer the highlights. News18 has the complete ‘apology emails’ trail. The Tejpal case often led to journalists angrily taking sides against one another. NewsLaundry’s tirade against ‘Left-Liberals’ is one example. These 2014 stories in The Hindu and Business Standard reveal how fraught the media environment was back then.
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