Nidhi Razdan said she had been given to believe that she would be joining Harvard in September
Former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan tweeted today that she had been the target of a "very serious phishing attack" and had learnt that what she believed was an offer to teach at Harvard University was fake. Ms Razdan had quit NDTV last year after a 21-year stint to take up the offer.
In her statement on Twitter, Ms Razdan said she had been given to believe that she would be joining Harvard in September but while she was preparing for her new job, she was told because of the pandemic, classes would begin in January.
She said she sensed something amiss in the delays and noted what she called "administrative anomalies" in the process described to her.
"At first, I had dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature. As a result, I reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity. Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I had received from the University," Ms Razdan said.
"After hearing from the University, I have now learnt that I have been the victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack. I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism. The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts."
She said she had filed a complaint with the police and requested immediate steps to identify and prosecute those behind the "abominable attack".
Ms Razdan said she had also written to the Harvard University authorities. "I hope that the police are able to get to the bottom of this attack on me at the earliest and help me bring this unsavoury incident to a swift end," she wrote.