Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières) has protested
about the search carried out at the head office of the web site
Tehelka.com. "The fact that this search was conducted on the very
same day that the web site's editor was due to give evidence of
capital importance in an enquiry into a corruption scandal shows that
the Central Bureau of Investigation and the government are stepping
up the pressure that has been exerted on the management of
Tehelka.com for more than a year," says Robert Ménard,
Secretary-General of the organisation. Reporters Without Borders has
written to Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani calling for an end to
the harassment to which Tehelka.com has been subjected.

According to information obtained by the organisation, about twenty
officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) carried out a
search of Tehelka.com's head office in New Delhi on 26 June 2002.
They also searched the home of one of the web site's journalists,
Kumar Badal. He is accused by the CBI of having paid poachers to kill
and film two leopards apparently belonging to a protected species in
the Saharanpur jungle (in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh).
According to witnesses, however, the CBI has been unable to produce
any documents relating to this case from among those seized during
the search. On the other hand, officers apparently confiscated
documents concerning the founding of the web site, notably e-mails
received from Shankar Sharma, owner of First Global, who provided the
initial financing for the web site and who is today in prison
although no evidence has been produced against him.

In addition to this, the search was carried out just hours before the
site's editor-in-chief, Tarun Tejpal, was due to give evidence before
the Venkataswami Commission. This commission was set up by the
government to investigate a corruption scandal uncovered by the web
site in March 2001, which led to the resignations of Defence Minister
Georges Fernandes and the president of the Hindu nationalist party,
Bangaru Laxman. Mr Tejpal's hearing, scheduled on the same day as
that of the former president of the Samata party, Jaya Jaitly - who
is suspected of acting as an intermediary between arms dealers and
people close to the former Defence Minister - was in the event
postponed. According to Kavin Gulati, the lawyer acting on behalf of
the web site, the enquiry had reached a "crucial stage in the
cross-examining" of the witnesses, leading him to conclude that the
choice of the date for the search was "absolutely motivated". A CBI
spokesman retorted that it was a "pure coincidence".
Right from its launch, Tehelka.com has specialised in investigative
journalism, notably corruption cases. Since its pages have been
updated with articles about the arms bribery scandal, the portal has
been subject to harassment by government agencies and more recently
by the tax department.