Why conviction of Tejpal would have been a travesty of justice for him and not justice to the “prosecutrix”

1
Why conviction of Tarun Tejpal would have been a
travesty of justice for him and not justice to
the prosecutrix
2
This is a long read. And a detailed one. It tries
to go beyond the headlines, selective
information, misinformation and various agendas
to examine the judgement of the Goa trial court
which acquitted former Tehelka editor Tarun
Tejpal on May 21, 2021. On page 509 of its
judgement the Goa district court, while
acquitting Tehelka founder Tarun Tejpal, has
said, the IO didnt supply a copy of unedited
CCTV footage of Block 7 to the accused (Tarun
Tejpal) due to which the accused had to move to
the honourable Supreme Court. The honourable
court had directed the prosecution to provide
clone copies of the unedited CCTV footage to the
accused, which was not done for two years and a
clone copy of the CCTV footage was finally handed
over to the accused in 2016. Two important
points emerge from this observation of the court.
One, it would not have been easy for Tarun Tejpal
to defend himself in the court.
3
Second, what actually was in the CCTV footage,
that the accused went all the way to the SC to
get a copy? Add to this the fact that despite the
SCs directive the accused didnt get a clone
copy of the footage for two full years and the
matter becomes even more intriguing. It's no
secret that in our country the prosecutrix of a
rape case often undergoes extreme hardships. This
has little to do with the laws but the attitude
of law enforcement agencies and the overall
attitude of society in such cases. The Tarun
Tejpal case however is different in this regard
in this case, the establishment stood firmly with
the lady in question. The fact that the Goa
police acted on its own and registered a suo motu
FIR against Tarun J Tejpal might give us a little
idea of that. Then there was former Goa CM
Manohar Parrikar who also exhibited keen interest
in the case and held several press conferences
with the media.
4
In her testimony before the district court, noted
in the verdict, the Investigating Officer in
charge of this case, Sunita Sawant admitted that
deputy SP, Sammy Tavares, SP OR Kudtarkar and
DIGP O P Mishra were directing and supervising
the investigation (Page 395). Sawant has the
reputation of a tough police officer and that is
probably why Goa police handed over the
investigation to her despite her being the formal
complainant in this case. Even when there was
another female officer, Sudiksha Nayak, in the
Goa police crime branch department who could
have been entrusted with the investigation. This
created the rather singular situation in which
the person filing the complaint was also the one
investigating it (Page 506-507). The Goa
political establishment did not lose any interest
in the case seven and a half years later and
despite the change of guard Chief Minister PB
Sawant himself announced that the State will
appeal the verdict in the High Court barely hours
after the lower court acquitted Tejpal.
5
And barely a day after a copy of the judgement
was released, not only did the Goa government
filed a plea in the High Court, they were
represented by no less than the country's
second-highest law officer, solicitor general
Tushar Mehta. A side note, but one that
illuminates the unlikely nature of events in this
case in 2014, while Tarun J Tejpal was in
judicial custody another case was suddenly
registered against him, alleging he was forging a
plan to escape from the jail. Tarun Tejpals
family alleges that this case was registered
purely in an attempt to deny him bail. The
accusation gains some ground given that 7 years
down the line no one seems to have the faintest
idea about what happened to that case. But now,
to the all-important CCTV footage. A cursory
reading of the verdict makes it clear that
whatever the CCTV footage contained, played a
crucial role in Tarun J Tejpals acquittal.
6
The prosecutrix had alleged that Tarun J Tejpal
had tried to outrage her modesty at Goas Grand
Hyatt on two consecutive nights, November 7 and
8, 2013, during Tehelkas annual Think
festival. The prosecutrixs assigned duties were
to chaperone Hollywood megastar Robert De Niro
and his daughter Drena during their time at the
event. The prosecutrix alleged that on the night
of November 7, a day prior to the start of the
festival, Tarun J Tejpal accompanied her to see
the De Niros off to their rooms after the dinner.
De Niros room was on the second floor of the
two-storied Block 7 of Grand Hyatt hotel. The
prosecutrix, in her statement, stated that they
(Tejpal and her) were on their way back (after
seeing de Niro off at his suite) but as she tried
to exit the lift on the ground floor, Tarun
Tejpal grabbed her and pulled her back into the
lift. Let us go wake up Bob (Robert De Niro),
the prosecutrix quotes Tarun J Tejpal as saying.
7
Once inside the lift, she says, Tarun Tejpal kept
pushing random buttons on the lift panel to keep
the lift in circuit without stopping anywhere and
without letting the doors open on any of the
floors. In her allegations, the prosecutrix went
on to state that when the lift finally came to a
halt on the ground floor after two minutes and
the doors opened, she immediately dashed out of
the lift blinking back tears, deeply distressed,
and thereafter left immediately for Goa
International Centre (GIC) where the Tehelka
staff were staying. Upon reaching GIC she
confided in three of her colleagues and told them
everything that had happened with her at Grand
Hyatt, her statement said. It is important to
know here that the Grand Hyatt did not have CCTV
cameras inside their lifts.
8
However, there were cameras in the lobbies
outside the lifts on each floor and this footage
therefore would have answers to some of the vital
questions related to the case were they inside
the lift for two minutes? Did the lift doors
actually remain closed for the full two minutes?
Did Tarun J Tejpal actually grab the prosecutrix
and pull her back into the lift? And when the two
of them finally exited the lift, what was the
nature of their interaction? Another important
question the footage would have naturally had
answers to was whether Tarun Tejpal and the
prosecutrix left the lift on any of the floors.
This question was rendered all the more important
because, in his defence, Tarun J Tejpal had
maintained that the two of them had accidentally
exited the lift on the first floor instead of the
second floor since all floors looked the same.
This would mean that they were not inside the
lift for the two minutes in question and were
there for less than half a minute, in two
separate parts.
9
In other words, the utmost importance of the
footage of Block 7 of the Grand Hyatt stands
established beyond question. If Tarun J Tejpal
had committed the crime the footage would have
nailed him and if he was innocent, as he claimed,
the footage was equally necessary for him to
prove his claim. Yet, Goa police the
complainant in the case seized the footage only
from the ground and second floors, not the first
floor. The court observes that despite being of
such crucial importance, the footage from the
first floor was either destroyed or not submitted
to the court. (page 421, 507). The court has
also observed that Tarun Tejpal in his defence
had mentioned exiting the lift on the first
floor, and even to prove his narrative false, the
first-floor footage would have been
all-important.
10
What makes things interesting is that the
investigating officer Sunita Sawant along with
multiple other police officials have in their
testimony actually confessed to having watched
the first-floor footage in November 2013 (page
419). Curiously every one of the officials who
acknowledged viewing first-floor footage claimed
that they could not remember what was on
it. When it became clear that first-floor
footage had existed and been viewed by the
police, the lawyer for the prosecution argued
that it was possible the footage had been
destroyed in the property room of the court, for
it might not have been stored properly. The
court, while not accepting this argument of the
prosecution, said in his judgement that if that
was the case then all the footage would have been
destroyed and not only of the first floor, that
too the footage of only a few days (20 August
2013 onwards). (Pages 433, 435).
11
The court observed that while the IO directed her
officers to seize the DVR for the ground and
second floors, she did not ask them to seize the
first-floor footage. The court further observes
that the police failed to seal the DVR room of
Block 7 at Grand Hyatt they did not seize the
footage in time and they failed to generate the
crucial hash value for the footage, which ensures
that it can not be tampered with. (pages 423,
507, 509). Moreover, the information regarding
the confiscation of the DVR was skipped from the
charge sheet as well as the case diary. The
investigating officer told the court that she had
no idea how that happened. On the other hand,
Tejpal issued a press release on November 22,
2013 itself, demanding that the related CCTV
footage be made public. This, of course, was
never done and only selective footage was made
available to him and the court.
12
Moreover, the court has, in its judgment,
observed that the prosecution objected to the
request of the defendant to cross-examine the
Investigating Officer while playing the DVR
containing the footage by saying that the DVR is
not functional. When a further request was made
by the accused to get either the DVR repaired or
obtain a DVR from the Grand Hyatt the public
prosecution opposed this suggestion as well. Why
did prosecution do that is anybodys guess (Page
433). . . . . . Let us now talk about the
footage that was actually produced before the
court. The first revelation the footage from
November 7 shows that Tejpal did not pull the
prosecutrix back into the lift on the ground
floor, after seeing off Robert De Niro as alleged
by the prosecutrix.
13
A quick but important digression the prosecutrix
told the court that Tejpal had insisted on
accompanying her to see De Niro to his suite,
given it was the first day of the event. This
detail was not part of her initial statement.
This claim of the prosecution was to show that
Tejpal was using De Niro as an excuse and the
real motive was to accompany the prosecutrix.
However, Prosecution Witness 43 (PW43) Prawal
Srivastava has testified that he was standing
with the accused when the prosecutrix came up to
them and asked Tejpal to accompany her. (Page
249, 251). Baseline logic here says that if
Tejpal had in fact intended to molest the
prosecutrix and was using De Niro as an excuse to
accompany her, wouldnt he do so the moment they
entered the lift together on the second floor
after leaving De Niro in his suite rather than
waiting for the lift to come down and open on the
ground floor and then pull her back inside?
14
As it turns out, footage from November 7 proves
that Tejpal did not in fact pull the prosecutrix
back into the lift as they exited the lift.
Instead, they both exited the building entirely
and spent almost 6 minutes in conversation
outside the block before they went back inside
block 7 and re-entered the lift. While
prosecutrix concealed this segment entirely in
her complaint and several statements, she finally
accepted in the court that they had been in
conversation outside before re-entering the
block. This indicates that the return to the
block and the act of getting into the lift again
might have triggered by what they were discussing
during those six minutes (page 249, 263). To
return to the allegations and the CCTV footage
in multiple statements to the police as well as
before the court, the prosecutrix repeatedly
emphasised that Tarun was simply pressing
buttons on the lifts panel to make the elevator
stay in circuit, preventing it from stopping
anywhere, and for the doors to open.'
15
However, two prosecution witnesses -
representative of the elevator company, Ameen
Jabbar and Grand Hyatt security officer Priyan K
S - testified in the court that keeping the lift
moving up and down like that (without the doors
opening) is not possible (Page 385). The court
also made an observation in its judgement that
the investigating officer did not even bother to
check whether the lift could be made to go up and
down without its doors opening, neither before
registering the FIR nor after the case was lodged
(page 520). This claim was the foundation of the
prosecutrixs allegation of assault that the
lift was prevented from opening, that she was
trapped by Tejpal inside it that she had no way
of getting out. As it was established that this
was not possible, the police once again paid
visits to the Grand Hyatt Hotel in November 2020,
seven years after the incident.
16
Almost immediately following this, the
prosecutrix (in December 2020) changed her
statement in the court.(Page 512, 518). Now, she
suddenly claimed that Tejpal pressed only one
button to keep the lift moving and doors closed
and not multiple buttons. She also changed her
claim that the lift had been in constant motion
to say she didnt know whether the lift was
moving or stationary. But she remained firm on
one thing - the doors did not open anywhere for
two minutes. However, during cross-examination
of the technical witnesses, it was also
established that the doors of the lift couldnt
be kept closed even by pressing the emergency
button inside the lift. (Page 396). Close
observation of the footage of the ground floor
and second floor during the two minutes of the
alleged incident also shows that the lift doors
opened at least twice on the ground floor only.

17
Because the footage of the first floor was not
available, it was not possible to say how many
times the lift doors opened on the first floor,
the court noted in its judgement. (page
389). This can have only two interpretations
either the prosecutrix and accused were inside
the lift when the doors of the lift opened during
those two minutes, or they were not inside the
lift at all. This is where the court took note
and examined Tejpals version of what had
occurred. It was his account that the prosecutrix
and he had exited the lift on the first floor
instead of the second by mistake and walked to
the corner room they thought was the de Niro
suite, only to realise on getting there that they
were on the wrong floor.
18
Tejpals version of events to play out roughly
matched the two minutes in question. If they did
exit the lift on the first floor, walk to the
corner and recognise their error, walk back to
the lift and go up to the second floor, they
would have taken around two minutes to reach from
the ground to the second floor. (page 443). But
there was still more, in terms of what the CCTV
footage went on to show. The prosecutrix had
said that when the lift did finally open on the
ground floor, she had dashed out of the lift
(changing the floor from ground to second in her
subsequent statements) while Tejpal followed her
and kept asking, What happened? She also said
that she was visibly upset and blinking back
tears at that point. The CCTV footage, however,
shows a stark counter-narrative. The footage of
the second floor shows Tejpal was the first one
to leave the lift and not the prosecutrix.
19
She calmly follows Tejpal out and they take the
stairs to the ground floor. While first-floor
footage of this time is unavailable, the ground
floor footage half a minute later also shows
Tejpal walking a little ahead while the two of
them come down the stairs and walk out, talking,
as they exit Block 7's lobby. The footage
becomes even starker when viewed against the
allegations on November 8, the day the
prosecutrix said Tejpal tried to molest her
again. Before that, though, there was one more
extremely significant omission from the
prosecutrixs narrative of November 7. The
prosecutrix, in her statement, had maintained
that her friends and co-workers at Tehelka,
Ishaan Tankha, Shougat Dasgupta and G Vishnu,
were the first ones she confided in soon after
she reached Goa International Centre, where the
Tehelka staff was staying.
20
Following this, on November 15, she also wrote an
email to these friends and attached a document
with a detailed chronological account of the
alleged incident. Because Ishaan was unable to
open the attachment, she sent him a fresh mail
the next day, November 16. This email was sent to
the prosecutrix stepmother also and it was also
the draft of the letter that was emailed to
Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhry on
November 18 as her official complaint. There were
multiple issues related to these email but police
selectively seized only a few of them only.
(pages 282, 286). It is the email, which she
wrote to his co-workers on Nov 5, 2013, that
holds evidence of a very crucial omission. In her
email, the prosecutrix mentioned spotting a
friend Nikhil Agrawal (DW4 or Defense Witness 4)
standing at the entrance to the lawn near Block 7
when she exited the block with Tejpal. According
to her email, she immediately asked her friend
DW4 to keep standing there and talk to her until
Tarun Tejpal left from there. She stated in her
email that she didnt inform him about what
happened to her moments ago. (page 258).
21
This would mean that by her own account, DW4 was
the first witness since she met him barely a
minute or two after the alleged incident. Yet,
the prosecutrix deleted all mention to him after
that one email - from her subsequent complaints
and every statement she made in the court. In
cross-examination, confronted with this draft and
reference to the first witness, the prosecutrix
finally admitted that she had deleted DW4 from
her account, and said she did so for some
reasons. She refused, however, to clarify those
reasons. (pages 258-260). In the law, the first
person a prosecutrix meets after rape or
molestation is extremely important to the case,
particularly if this person is met soon after the
alleged incident. Such a person is called a
contemporaneous witness. Yet, as the verdict
notes, this fact was willingly not disclosed to
the court and the victim removed all references
pertaining to Nikhil.
22
The court also noted that the IO, despite seizing
documents that referenced this witness by name,
and knowing fully well that he was the only
contemporaneous witness in the whole case,
neither tried to contact or question him nor did
she ask the prosecutrix why she had deleted all
references to this witness in her official
complaint. This crucial omission didnt end
there. The friend in question himself reached out
to the police via a letter and asserted that
there were some facts he wanted to add to the
case yet, despite receiving this letter from
him, the Investigating Officer failed to question
him. Confronted with this, she maintained that
she did not question the witness on the
directions of her superiors in the police
department (page 271). Later, he was made a
witness by the defence side. The court has
observed that the testimony of this friend of the
prosecutrix, DW4, was exactly the opposite of the
prosecutrixs claims. DW4 in his testimony
recalled meeting the prosecutrix on November 7
while standing in the garden with his fiancee.
23
I saw them coming from the poolside towards the
garden. Tejpal moved towards the bar while she
came towards me, DW4 told the court, She was
excited and had a smile on her face. DW4 told
the court that the prosecutrix motioned him to
come near her and told him that she had been
flirting with Tejpal. She was smiling and did not
look perturbed at all, DW4 testified (pages 260,
262). Interestingly, the next day, the
prosecutrix exchanged multiple messages with DW4.
Two of the messages from her to him read But
thank God I met you, and Obviously, you wont
tell anyone about this. The court also notes
that the prosecutrix lied about her exact
relationship with DW4. She claimed he was only an
acquaintance and not a good friend however,
verdict says that there were a total of 53,176
messages exchanged between them on Whatsapp on
the phone seized by the police.
24
When DW4 was asked about their friendship, he
ratified their extreme closeness. But it is
strange that despite meeting him within seconds
and being extremely close to him, the prosecutrix
did not tell him anything about the incident. On
the other hand, she had never communicated with
Shougat Dasgupta on Whatsapp and had barely 10
messages exchanged with Ishaan Tankha and under
500 with G Vishnu, yet she chose to return to her
hotel and then talk to these three witnesses
two hours later inter room. (page 134, 253) . . .
. . Back to November 8, the second of the two
alleged incidents. In her complaint to Tehelka
and statement to the police, the prosecutrix
recalls Tejpal asking her to accompany him to
Robert De Niros room. We need to get something
from there, she quotes Tejpal as saying, as she
walked into the lobby of Block 7.
25
Scared that she was being asked to accompany him
to De Niros empty room, she insisted she would
go and get whatever Tejpal needed from the room
by herself, she stated. At this point, as per the
prosecutrix, Tejpal held her hand and dragged her
into the lift where he molested her again (page
191). She further alleged that when they reached
the second floor, he said to her, the universe
was telling us something, to which she replied
that she was going down by the stairs and not the
lift. Tejpal however did not let her and sensing
her hysteria, pulled her back into the lift. He
was comfortable manhandling me by now, she wrote
in her complaint. Here is what the CCTV footage
for this sequence of events shows. On the ground
floor, at 0810 pm, Tejpal is walking toward the
lift while the prosecutrix is walking behind him.
Near the lift, Tejpal bumps into well-known
photographer Rohit Chawla.
26
Tejpal and Chawla talk a bit, and Tejpal gestures
to Chawla that he would call him and walks into
the now-waiting lift, followed by the prosecutrix
who waited for him to finish his conversation.
Contrary to the claim of being grabbed by the
wrist and pulled in, Tejpal here doesnt touch
her at all. (page 444). Twenty seconds later,
the footage from the second-floor camera shows
that the lift opens and the prosecutrix comes out
followed by Tejpal, but barely two steps out,
Tejpal turns around and enters the lift again. At
this point, the prosecutrix who has gone a few
steps realises he has gone back into the lift -
and she dashes to run into the lift after him.
This is the moment which in her narrative she
describes as him manhandling her and preventing
her from leaving the lift. But the footage shows
no physical contact between them (page 445).
27
So stark is the contradiction between whats
happening on screen and what the prosecutrixs
account says on both days that the verdict noted,
What the prosecutrix has claimed and what the
screens show are completely opposite of each
other and still the Investigating Officer didnt
even question the prosecutrix on the same. (page
520). The stark contradictions, the concealing
of facts, the omission of crucial witnesses and
episodes, and the multiple changes of narrative,
led the court to conclude that the prosecutrix
could not be considered a witness of sterling
quality on whose sole deposition Tejpal could
have been pronounced guilty. (page 229). The
court also noted the absence of medical evidence
in the case. When the prosecutrix was asked about
this in court, she maintained that the police
never asked her to get medically examined or she
would have done so. The documentary record
however shows that she refused the medical
examination on paper (page 47).
28
. . . . . This is a case that throws up almost
countless dimensions for greater examination. Let
us limit ourselves to two. One, the role of the
police in this case. While lacunae in the
investigation have been referred to above, it is
barely the tip of the iceberg. The verdict lists
over 40 counts of police failure in this
investigation. The second and much-touted aspect
relates to the apparent censure of the
prosecutrix by the judge for her behaviour,
something that has triggered extreme outrage on
social media. A close look at the judgement
alongside the complaint and the multiple
statements of the prosecutrix place this in their
proper context. Various social media posts seem
to suggest the judge has called out the
prosecutrix for not behaving like a victim.
29
Whereas the judges observations seem to be in
response to the victims own statements about how
she was feeling, acting, responding, in her
testimony in court. The verdict notes the
contrast between the prosecutrixs claimed
actions versus actual actions recorded on camera,
in photographs and as described by various
witnesses. The prosecutrixs narrative speaks of
being terrified, of avoiding Mr Tarun J Tejpal,
of being scared to be anywhere in the hotel for
fear of being accosted by him again (Page 468).
Multiple photographs over the course of the three
days of the event show her smilingly posing for
pictures with the accused, Mr Robert De Niro and
other persons, of laughing moments immediately
after the alleged second incident in conversation
with Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhury, of
being visibly at ease. Witnesses recalled hearing
her call out to Mr Tejpal to come to join a
photograph she was taking with Robert de Niro on
November 10, 2013. One of the prosecution
witnesses even noted that she looked happier than
both Mr De Niro and Mr Tejpal in that photograph.
After the alleged incidents she also sent a few
messages to the accused telling him about where
she was without him asking her to do so. (page
489).
30
The court also examined WhatsApp and CCTV
evidence that show the prosecutrix on two nights
returned to Robert de Niros room late at night
and detailed playfully her encounters with him to
her friends on WhatsApp, which included Tarun
Tejpals daughter, in words and tones that dont
match the narrative of being fearful and
traumatised after being sexually assaulted just a
few hours before. In fact, on the night of
November 9, she chose not to return to her own
hotel at all but instead took a key to a
production room from someone on staff and stayed
back at Grand Hyatt itself. (Page
469) Prosecutrix told the court that as she was
about to leave for the airport after the Think
Festival was over, she realised that her mother
was staying in her flat in Mumbai and three of
her (mothers) associates were also coming to
stay with her. Moreover, she also wanted to deal
with the trauma caused by the sexual assault on
her. So she decided to stay back in Goa for a few
days.
31
But the court observed, citing the evidence, that
the prosecutrix planned to stay in Goa with her
friends pre and post Think Festival much in
advance and the alleged incidents of November 7
and 8 in no way changed her or her mothers
plans. She reached Mumbai a day after her mother
left the city (Page 491, 500). It is the sheer
stark contradiction of her claims and her
actions, as well as so many crucial omissions,
that the court noted while not finding the
prosecutrix a consistent or reliable witness on
whose solo verdict it could base a
conviction. There were multiple other
contradictions the court took into account but it
was not on these factors that Tejpal was
acquitted. It was the CCTV footage, the
implausibility of the lift operation as per the
prosecutrixs allegations that were the main
reasons behind his acquittal. . . . . .
32
About the role of the police in this case, the
court has commented at such length that more than
one write-ups can be compiled on it. The courts
disappointment with the police can be gauged by
the fact that the IO did not even match the
claims made by the complainant with the CCTV
footage of the hotel on November 26, at the time
of recording her statement, even when she already
watched the footage herself. The IO didnt ask
the prosecutrix about how she got to know that
she was in the lift for 2 minutes, on November 7.
The police did not ask her about the buttons
pressed by Tejpal to stop the doors of the lift
from opening and they did not bother to
confiscate the mails she had sent to her
co-workers on November 15. It was her first
statement regarding the incident and of utmost
importance to the case. None of the mails the
police produced in the court was downloaded from
Tehelkas server. The police did not record
Nikhil Agrawals statement, nor Tia Tejpals or
Kartikeya from the production team who helped the
prosecutrix stay in Grand Hyatt on the
intervening night of November 8-9. Police didnt
ask the complainant about the Nikhil and did not
even produce a production manual of the
Mitsubishi lift in the court. . . . . .
33
And finally, about the two emails, Tejpal had
written to Tehelka staff and the prosecutrix on
November 20, 2013? The first of these was an
official apology (written to Tehelka staff)
that documentary evidence shows was written by
Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhury after the
prosecutrix demanded this apology for closure
of the complaint. The judge notes that multiple
Supreme Court judgements make clear that
confessions demanded under threat or under the
inducement of closure of a complaint, or demands
for confessions that require an accused to
self-incriminate are inadmissible in a court of
law. The judge also notes that the second of the
two emails, titled Personal by Tarun Tejpal
does not make any admittance of what the
prosecutrix is alleging.
34
The judge also notes that multiple Supreme Court
judgements make clear no confession can be read
selectively to omit other parts of the document
that contradict or deny the allegation. If the
mail titled personal is looked at in the light
of the Supreme court decision, there is
absolutely no admission of confession of any
incriminating fact even remotely suggesting
sexual assault by the accused, the court
maintains. (Page 300) . . . . . And at the end a
small, seemingly insignificant detail but one
that was responsible for a lot of public rage
against Tejpal the repeated claim by the
prosecutrix that Tejpal was a father figure to
her, someone she knew and trusted since
childhood, which is why her anguish and
devastation was bigger, and why Tejpals crime
was even more heinous.But an email by the
prosecutrix on Tarun Tejpals 50th birthday (in
March 2013, the same year when the alleged
incident took place) shows that this was not
true. In this mail, she clearly wrote that when
she met Tarun Tejpal for the first time, she was
already working for Tehelka (page 110).