Tehelka sexual assault case: Arundhati Roy terms it 'Rape Number Two'; Goa Police contact journalist

Panaji/New Delhi: Goa Police has established contact with the young woman journalist who levelled a sexual assault allegation against Tehelka magazine Editor Tarun Tejpal even as he moved the Delhi High Court on Monday seeking anticipatory bail.

The woman, meanwhile, resigned from the magazine to be "free from any kind of pressure" as its employee while the National Commission for Women(NCW) sought a response from the Mumbai Police on steps it has taken for her security in the wake of her statement that she was being pressurised by Tejpal's family to "protect" him.

Goa Deputy Inspector General of Police O P Mishra said in Panaji that the investigating officer in the case had contacted the woman but refused to divulge details, claiming police wanted to protect her privacy.

Justice G. S. Sistani of the Delhi High Court, before whom the bail petition was mentioned by senior advocates K. T. S. Tulsi and Geeta Luthra, will hear the matter tomorrow. Tejpal, in his petition, filed through advocate Sandeep Kapur, has also sought transit bail to approach the appropriate court in Goa.

Goa police had on November 22 lodged an FIR against Tejpal under IPC sections 376 (rape), 376 (2)(k) (rape by a person of a woman in his custody taking advantage of his official position) and 354 (outraging modesty) in connection with the incident.

When contacted, the woman journalist told PTI that she has resigned from Tehelka. Sources said she had sent her resignation to the Tehelka management two days ago as she wanted to be free from any kind of pressure as an employee of the organisation.

The woman had issued a statement on Saturday suggesting she and her family were being subjected to pressure and intimidation at an "intensely traumatic" time to "protect" Tejpal. Disappointed over Tehelka management's handling of the case, consulting editor Jay Mazoomdaar and Revati Laul, an assistant editor, have also have put in their papers.

There are reports that Tehelka's Literary Editor Shougat Dasgupta also stepped down and more people are likely to resign in the next few days. A three-member Goa police team in the last two days had quizzed Tehelka Managing Editor Shoma Chaudhury and three employees contacted by the victim to corroborate her version.

The woman had mentioned the names of her three colleagues, with whom she had interacted soon after the alleged assault happened at a Goa hotel lift around a fortnight ago, in her complaint and said Chaudhury could corroborate the incident from them.

Meanwhile, author and activist Arundhati Roy dubbed the entire sexual assault episode as "Rape Number Two: the rape of the values and the politics that Tehelka claims it stands."

"What has happened now has not shocked me, but it has broken my heart," she said in her column in a weekly magazine. She said Tejpal himself has admitted to his crime in his own emails and text messages..."from his position of uncontested power as her boss and loftily apologized to her, and then in an act that can only be described as delusionary, announced his own punishment—-six months of leave in order to 'lacerate' himself".

Now that it has become a police matter, she said that on the advice of lawyers whose services only the very rich can afford, Tejpal has begun to do what many men accused of rape do—-vilify the woman he preyed on and call her a liar.

"Outrageously, it is being suggested that Tarun is being 'framed' for political reasons-—presumably by the Right-wing Hindutva brigade. So now a young woman who he very recently saw fit to employ, is not just a loose woman, but an agent of the fascists? This is Rape Number Two: the rape of the values and the politics that Tehelka claims it stands for, and an affront to those who work there and who have supported it in the past," she said.