INDIA: Were sting journos also 'middlemen' for MPs?

Journalists charged as middlemen in scam, although police charge sheet acknowledges the two were posing as members of a fake business association for a sting operation

The Times of India
Sunday, August 16, 2009

By Manoj Mitta

New Delhi --- How did journalists come to be accused of abetting corruption in the chargesheet on the 2005 sting operation that led to the historic expulsion of 11 MPs? Defying logic, the Delhi Police have branded Aniruddha Bahal and Suhasini Raj of Cobrapost as "middlemen" of the very MPs who had been exposed by them in the cash-for-questions scam.

In the chargesheet that remained under wraps for two months till TOI reported about it last week, the police clubbed Bahal and Raj with the six middlemen who had helped them approach the 11 MPs in 2005 to enter into financial negotiations on raising questions in Parliament.

While alleging that those 11 ex-MPs had acted "in connivance with their middlemen", the police listed out the middlemen who, strangely, included Bahal and Raj. This is contrary to the police's admission in the same chargesheet that Bahal and Raj had "posed" as members of a "nonexistent " business association during the sting operation, which showed MPs "receiving money for raising questions in Parliament".

The 80-page chargesheet contains no explanation of how the journalists seeking to expose corrupt MPs could also have been abetting them. On the one hand, the sequence of events narrated by the chargesheet brings out the fact that Bahal and Raj got in touch with the middlemen and MPs purely for a journalistic purpose, which resulted in the telecast of their sting operation on Aaj Tak in December 2005. But on the other hand, the chargesheet concludes without any reasoning that the journalists were among the middlemen and were guilty of abetment.

Glossing over the incongruity of clubbing the corruption-busters with the alleged offenders and abettors, the chargesheet claims that the investigation has been done "with respect to all the middlemen, MPs and others who indulged into (sic) corruption and accepted bribe for asking and tabling questions in Parliament". Thus, in its sweeping indictment of all the accused persons named by it, the chargesheet makes out that even Bahal and Raj were guilty of taking bribes to ask questions in Parliament. This is despite the evidence recorded in the chargesheet that the questions tabled at the instance of the journalists were all apocryphal (for example, one was about the benefits of a non-existent Target Plus Scheme).

While describing the role of the ex-MPs and their associates, the chargesheet gives a blow-by-blow account of how each of them committed or abetted corruption. But when it comes to the two journalists, the chargesheet is economical with details. All it says against Bahal, for instance, is: "During investigation it was found that he has abetted the offences committed by the other accused and that his act is liable to punished under the provisions of Section 12 of Prevention of Corruption Act read with Section 120B of IPC."

Given the manner in which the police have arraigned the journalists without any evidence to attribute criminal intent to them, the chargesheet seems to be a warning to the media not to be emboldened by the success of the sting operation on the cash-for-questions scam.

Date Posted: 8/16/2009