New Delhi:
The alleged sexual assault on a young journalist by Tehelka's editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal comes less than a year after the revolutionary protests over the December 16 Delhi gang-rape. From a news magazine that was among the loudest voices in the fight for a law against sexual crimes against women, Tehelka allowing the accused to become a judge of his own crime has turned the cameras on the media itself.
Senior journalist Sidharth Vardharajan says, "Media suffers from problem of sexual harassment, gender discrimination... How can the media point fingers at politicians if we are not going to follow prescribed norms in our own organisations."
According to law, all workplaces must have an anti-harassment panel, but Tehelka did not. Nothing was done to ensure legal action against the alleged attacker.
Women's rights activist Kavita Krishnan said, "It's like families who say don't wash your dirty linen outside or khap panchayats say let's sit down and sort it out in a panchayati way."
Tehalka's managing editor Shoma Chaudhury responded, "The aggrieved party sent me a complaint she wanted an internal action to be taken which has been taken. I am in the process of setting up a committee, by this evening harassment committee will be set up."
But have Tehelka and Ms Chaudhury's remedial action come too late and is the self-imposed six month leave of absence by Mr Tejpal enough?
The Editors' Guild of India does not think so. In a statement they said, "Self-proclaimed atonement and recusal for a period are hardly the remedies for what the allegations show to be outright criminality."
The Press Club of India has demanded that the criminal justice system take suo motu notice of the case and the Delhi Union of Journalists is planning a black day with protests against the crime in the Capital on Saturday.
In 2002, an NGO called Sakhi had released a study that suggested 80 per cent working women faced harassment at work.
Last year, Oxfam India also put forward a report that revealed that things haven't improved much for women at work in the past decade. Not only do they continue to face harassment, but they still don't feel they can report these incidents.