TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: With nearly 50-60 national and local media positioned outside the court, their cameras pointed like bazookas at the court entrance and eagle eyed camera persons literally jumping at every sound and rumour dissected and trisected, interspersed by a large police force, the area in front of the sessions court looked like a shooting range.
To add to this, the huge media hype had led to more than a few curious onlookers joining the media.
Another media battalion was camping at the Crime Branch office at Dona Paula given that Tejpal chose to station himself there the whole evening.
Every time a lawyer or an official involved in the case made an appearance there was a rush as camera persons jostled for space and vied for prime spots along with reporters.
The climax came when Tejpal’s lawyers came out of the court after the anticipatory bail was rejected.
Earlier, as Tejpal walked out of the Court after the concluding of the hearing at about 12:30 pm, a protestor threw a black cloth at him while he was entering a car parked outside the Court. The protestor later identified as Mangal Chowdhary was whisked away by the police and detained as a preventive measure.
The sexual assault case gripped the media since it broke more than 10 days ago as Tejpal was considered one of the most powerful journalists in the country and his Tehelka was renowned for its hard-hitting investigative journalism.
The infamous drama unfolded after he temporarily stepped down from the post admitting in a leaked email to the magazine’s management that an unfortunate incident had occurred between himself and the woman journalist.
He had described the incident as a bad lapse of judgment. The complainant had alleged that he sexually assaulted her in an elevator of a seven star hotel where the magazine’s annual event Think Fest was hosted on November 7 and 8 in Goa.
