Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

21 PW-7, Tarunjit Tejpal, has further deposed that Tehelka practiced a lot of very prominent journalism soon after its launch. One of its biggest exposing was into match fixing in Cricket. This led to a global clean up in Cricket. Also, some of the finest columnist and writers in India were writing on tehelka.com. The genesis of operation Westend lies in a major fire that took place in the ammunition dump at Bharatpur. At that time, there was a lot of rumours that there was something sinister about that fire. Anirudh Bahal, who was the head of the investigation team at tehelka, decided to investigate into corruption in Defence deals. This was an area which had been full of controversy for the last fifteen years in Indian Public Life, post the Bofors controversy. As journalists, it was a story worth pursuing. He gave Anirudh the go ahead to follow his investigation and in this he was assisted CC No. 56/2011 CBI Vs Narender Singh 13 of 71 mainly by another reporter Samuel Mathew. They also took the assistance of one Anil Malviya in the investigation. He has further deposed that in pursuit of the investigation, they ended up meeting a whole host of officials, Army officers and politicians. The whole process took about six months of field work. During this investigation, they discovered wide spread corruption in the defence procurement sector. The product that they were ostensibly trying to sell was a Hand Held Thermal Imager. They finished the investigation in January 2001. Thereafter, they transcribed 105 tapes that had been shot during the course of investigation. The equipment used for the investigation consisted of Spy Cams placed in a variety of products including a briefcase, a satchal, a hand bag and a tie. The cassettes used were Hi-8 and DV Cam. All the footage was kept always in the custody of Aniruddh Bahal who normally stored them safely in the office locker. From January to March 2001, these tapes were occasionally stored in the locker of Standard Chartered Grandlay Bank in Malcha Marg, New Delhi.

456. 25 In his cross-examination PW8 K. Seshaiah has stated that the documents, prima facie, are those sent by him. He further stated that as per the contents and the total number of pages, he could not recollect exact figures and facts at this stage.

26 PW-9 is Aniruddha Bahal. He deposed that he was journalist since 1991 and had been employed by various media organizations like India Today, Down to Earth, Financial Express, Outlook Magazine, Tehelka.com and he was Editor in Chief of Cobrapost.com. During the Course of his career, he alongwith his colleague/partners Sh Tarunjit Tejpal and Minty Tejpal started Tehelka in the February-March, 2000. Their website started in 2000 and they did many investigative stories. One of the first stories that they did in Tehelka was their investigation into match fixing in Cricket, which led to an inquiry by BCCI. During the course of his employment in Tehelka, his designation was of The Editor, Investigations. He held the same designation till the date of his resignation in Tehelkha in the year 2003. Sometimes in April of 2000, there was ammunition Depot fire in Bharatpur. There were various rumors associated with this fire which basically suggested that this could be a way of destroying inventory so that the provisions in the store could not be accounted for. PW9 has further deposed that this set him thinking and they, in the investigative cell of Tehelka, decided to conduct an investigation into the defence procurement system of the country. The way they decided to do it was to conduct and under cover investigation at the very bottom of the chain pretending to be defence dealers themselves. During the Course of their investigation, CC No. 56/2011 CBI Vs Narender Singh 16 of 71 members of his team like Mathew Samuel, etc met with various people like bureaucrats, army officer, politicians and defence middlemen to forward the interest of their fictitious product which was hand held thermal imagers (HHTI). They started a fictitious companny called West End International which was based at an address in London and which sold HHTI. During the course of their investigation, PW9 adopted the identity of Alwin D.souza, who was the President of this fictitious company called West End International. Mathew Samuel was the Chief Liaison officer of this fictitious company. They started with a person called P.Sasi, who worked in the Ministry of Defence and who was instrumental in taking them to certain Col. Sehgal, who was the Director (Armament in the Indian Army). It was Col Sehgal and P. Sasi, who made them aware of the requirement in the Indian Army of HHTI.

30 During the story, he assumed the role of President of Westend International with the alias of Alwyn D'souza. Mathew Samuel the main reporter during the undercover investigation was the chief liaison officer with his original name. The third person who had helped them during the investigation was late Anil Malviya who took an alias of Rajiv Sharma. Sh. Anil Malviya was somebody who had come in contact with Mathew Samuel sometime in August, 2000 with an idea to do a story in Mumbai on the procurement process in the Central Store Departments in Mumbai. That story they could not investigate fully but impressed with his confidence in talking with people, PW-9 teamed him with Mathew Samuel initially during the course of operation Westend. PW9 has further deposed that While he was the editor investigations of the story, his personal appearance in the field was limited for about 8 or 9 tapes as after tehelka's match fixing stories in cricket, his face had become recognizable even when he entered the field, he did so, after shaving his head and putting a cap on and changing his accent. During the course of the field operation, he kept Sh. Tarun Tejpal the editor of Tehelka abreast of what was happening and took the field decisions in consultations with Mathew Samuel.

55 In his cross-examination, PW15 had stated that it was correct that he himself had not seen that anyone had handed over these instruments to Mathew Samuel.

56 PW-16, Mathew Samuel, deposed that, from 1996 onwards, he was working as Journalist with various media organizations. In 2000, Tehalka.com exposed story of cricket match fixing scam. He contacted Tarun Tejpal and there was a brief discussion in their Swami Nagar, Panchsheel Office and PW16 offered that he could further develop match fixing story. So he directed PW16 to meet Anirudh Bahal. He was at that time Editor Investigation with Tehalka.com. During his conversation with Mr. Bahal, PW16 had given him lots of story ideas and one of them was antique smuggling from South India i.e. a place called Tanjore. PW16 further deposed that in connection with said story related to antique smuggling, he visited Tanjore by train. Mr. Bahal had also gone there but he took flight from Delhi to Chennai and then reached Tanjore. When in Tanjore, Mr. Bahal had offered him a job in Tahalka.com. Thus, in the year 2000, PW16 joined Tehalka.com and remained with them till 2003. When he was staying in CC No. 56/2011 CBI Vs Narender Singh 35 of 71 Nagalraya, one of his neighbour, Mr. Nair, who was a Keralite came into his contact. He knew one Mr. P. Sasi and that is how he, first met P. Sasi. Initially he was introduced by Mr. Nair as Mr. Sasi Menon. Later, PW16 learnt that his name was P. Sasi. He was working with Ministry of Defence (MoD). Through him, he met various defence officials etc. Aim of the operation was to expose, top to bottom, as to how defence deals had been taking place, with the help of under-table transactions.