Dogged by credibility crunch, Vineet Narain demands credit

Kalchakra shot into national fame in the early ’90s when it `exposed’ the Jain hawala scam which sucked almost every senior politician of the leading parties — Congress, BJP and erstwhile Janata Dal — into the maelstrom. While it left a trail of tattered reputations and politicians in exile, it was not long before the courts threw out the case for lack of conclusive evidence.

Such serious lapses on his part have dogged Narain’s career. In the latest case, legal opinion has ranged from accusations that the case is based on ambiguous facts to the lack of even a single document pointing to any impropriety on the part of Justice Anand.

Narain is, however, quick to ask why — when judges use the contempt clause against journalists whenever embarrassing stories about their conduct appear — have they chosen to ignore his story this time. He has the answer ready. “It is when you present truth that no one hauls you up for contempt. I am not after Mala Anand; I want journalists to know that even the highest court cannot suppress the truth,” he says with some pride. But some legal sources argue the SC has ignored him only to deny him publicity.

Kalchakra has developed a knack for staying in the news ever since it was first launched in 1989 for its exposes and on-camera inquisitions. It was one of the only two news-magazines which cashed in on the booming video market of the ’80s when satellite channels were many years away. It created quite a stir when one of its reporters posed as a streetwalker to expose how even “educated, middle-class men with jobs” do not hesitate to succumb to temptation. But the path-breaking story was marred by accusations that the subjects were trapped.

Undeterred, Kalchakra pressed on: it got Ajit Singh’s wife in a psychiatric ward to talk about her physical and mental abuse on camera, highlighted the danger of eating a popular brand of noodles because of the presence of the harmful mono-sodium glutamate (MSG), exposed the brutal election-rigging mafia, warned against the dangers of iodised salt, declared Maruti as an unsafe car and even argued against journalists receiving awards.

Narain is far from modest in claiming that he was the pioneer of investigative journalism in the country. “All I had was a camera, but I trudged through the countryside investigating and exposing our social ills and corruption in high places — from bonded labour to land scams involving government officials.” But Kalchakra was forced to close down just three months after its birth because the distributors (who provided the funds) ran away. Kalchakra then appeared as and when Narain could muster up resources.

When the Jain hawala scandal broke in 1991 (interestingly, it was exposed on video on the lawns of Jethmalani’s house), to Narain’s horror, the media almost ignored it. Laments Narain: “While the media has always been supportive of me all these years — every story on television journalism has featured me — when the Jain hawala story broke, the media underplayed the story and there was no mention of Kalchakra at all. I became an untouchable.” According to Narain, the censorship of his work began.

He says there was a deliberate campaign to malign him and attack his credibility through raids, intimidation and a well-orchestrated whisper campaign. Very soon Narain found himself thrown on the wayside. He went into a deep depression, became a Krishna bhakt (he had been introduced to the movement when he had gone to do an expose on ISCKON) and spent months in Vrindavan, chanting and meditating.

Things began looking up when three years later, Justice Verma admitted in the Supreme Court that it was becoming difficult to pursue the hawala case as he was being pressured from the top. The judge, however, refused to divulge any name.

The sensational revelation brought Kalchakra back into the news — Narain set up the Kalchakra Trust with former Punjab Police Commissioner J F Ribeiro as chairperson — the management, however, has met just once at its inaugural (Ribeiro was unavailable for comment as he is abroad) and Narain became a permanent fixture on fora that stretched across the length and breadth of the country, discussing issues ranging from freedom of the Press to clean public life. But in a couple of years, Narain suffered another bout of depression as the courts finally threw out the case.

His credibility had taken yet another knock. As Narain saw a “conspiracy” unfolding before his eyes to quash the case, “this time by the judges themselves”, according to him, he resorted to a desperate move. He got a businessman, Jolly Bansal, to sign a sworn affidavit alleging he had paid vast sums of money to Justice Verma to scuttle the hawala case.

Says Prashant Bhushan, a reputed public interest litigation lawyer and a member of the National Judicial Commission (which looks into the conduct of judges): “Vineet Narain suffers from a serious lack of credibility because he is never able to produce documentary evidence to prove his allegations. How could he have published that absurd affidavit by a known criminal like Bansal, making wild allegations against Justice Verma and Justice Sen! Just because you have a grouse does not mean you resort to such tactics. It is utterly irresponsible. Even in the Justice Anand case, when we asked him for documentary evidence, he had none. It was only after the magazine from the south (Frontline) did an extensive report that it began to sound reasonably credible.”

Narain is defiant when he says he does not need the urban, ruling, English elite to carry on his work — he will continue to write his syndicated columns which, he says, appears in 20 languages; his print publication actually allows copies to be freely produced and “distributed among concerned citizens”. He is now working on a major defence scam. Or so he claims.