The December 31, 2018 issue of Outlook magazine carried a terse clarification, referring to an issue from eight years ago that broke one of the most controversial stories in recent memory. The clarification said: “In the issue dated November 29, 2010, Outlook had carried a cover story titled The 2G Scam Tapes. It was never the intention of the article to suggest that Mr Vir Sanghvi had any role in the 2G scam or the events surrounding it. Any impression to the contrary in the article is regretted.”

On November 29, 2010, Outlook carried transcripts of the Radia Tapes, described by its then editor Vinod Mehta as “one of the biggest political-media scandals in the last two decades”. These tapes recorded thousands of telephonic conversations between PR consultant Niira Radia and powerful politicians, industrialists, and journalists. Of these, only a fraction were leaked to the media.

Several journalists featured infamously in the Radia tapes. Barkha Dutt and MK Venu made the cut—and so did Vir Sanghvi. Outlook’s cover story claimed that “the transcripts suggest that journalists Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt also lobbied for Raja with the Congress party.” Moreover, Sanghvi’s face was stamped on the issue’s cover.

So how did the recent clarification come about? In 2011, Outlook published a piece by Sanghvi where he claimed that the tapes involving him were inauthentic and manipulated, citing results from multiple audio labs based abroad. Sanghvi told Newslaundry that based on these reports, he had told editor Vinod Mehta that the issue’s cover was defamatory since it insinuated that he was involved in the 2G scam. “He [Mehta] said, ‘I’ve carried your piece on the tapes so this doesn’t matter.’ I didn’t agree, so I filed a case,” Sanghvi said.

Sanghvi’s complaint contended that the tapes were doctored and that the accusations made by Outlook were false and defamatory. In court, Outlook argued that it couldn’t defend itself since it lacked access to the original tapes, which were kept in a sealed cover with the Supreme Court. These tapes couldn’t be produced until the conclusion of the investigation into the 2G scam by the special CBI court. The court duly adjourned the case indefinitely.

In January 2018, the Delhi High Court noted that the conclusion of the 2G trial in December 2017 allowed for Sanghvi’s case to be recalled. It further pronounced that “the Trial Court is directed to expedite the proceedings and preferably conclude the same within a period of one year”.

It was this recall of Sanghvi’s defamation case that led to a settlement. In a conversation with Newslaundry, Outlook CEO Indranil Roy described the case as a “dead and done issue”. “It was hanging in the court for no rhyme or reason so we said let’s just close it. There’s no other motive, there’s no other argument, there’s no other reason. It’s as simple as that,” he stated.

It should be remembered that in 2012, Outlook had apologised to journalist MK Venu, who had filed a criminal defamation case against the magazine for putting his photo and name on the same cover. Outlook’s clarification had said: “The cover image of THE 2G SCAM TAPES (November 29, 2010) mistakenly included a photograph of Financial Express managing editor MK Venu with a caption that read, ‘In The Ring’. This appeared to imply that he was part of a group that worked to perpetuate the then Telecom Minister A Raja in power, resulting in the scam. This was not our intention and we regret the impression created”

Sanghvi, however, has much more to say. According to him, upon recall, the two sides decided to focus on the imputations that the Outlook story made—that he was lobbying for Raja—rather than the validity of the tapes. “This went on for about 5-6 hearings, and it became very clear to the judge that this wasn’t going anywhere … so he asked the Outlook lawyer if he would entertain a settlement,” Sanghvi said.

Sanghvi said this led the two sides to agree to a mediation process. “Ultimately, the sticking point was that they [Outlook] were willing to withdraw whatever they had said about the 2G scam and any suggestion that I was involved in it.”

Except that besides the clarification, there is no conspicuous withdrawal of the allegations in the story. The Outlook website still has the cover story with the “defamatory” sentence intact (“The transcripts suggest that journalists Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt also lobbied for Raja with the Congress party.”) This betrays a striking dissonance, begging the question as to whether Outlook’s clarification blames the reader for interpreting this sentence to mean what it obviously means: that by lobbying for Raja, Sanghvi was involved, if not in the scam, then definitely in the events surrounding it.

Newslaundry reached out to Outlook’s editor, Ruben Banerjee, for comment. Banerjee brushed off questions regarding the clarification stating that he had no personal knowledge about the issue. “It happened in 2010 or 2011, and it didn’t happen under my watch. I have nothing to do with the clarification.”

Apology or clarification?

Several media outlets like The Times of India, The Week, and Business Standard reported that Sanghvi’s lawyer, Nitya Ramakrishnan, had claimed that “the media outlet [Outlook] has published an apology” as part of the settlement. However, Outlook calls its statement only a “clarification”.

Outlook’s CEO Indranil Roy denies that the clarification is an apology. “It’s certainly not an apology at all. It’s a mutually agreed clarification.” Referring to the Times of India article, he said, “TOI did not take or give Outlook’s version in its publication and only published one version of the matter. It should have published the settlement terms. In the settlement terms, it is clearly recorded in Court that Outlook is issuing a ‘clarification’. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything stated to the contrary by anyone or to state that it was an ‘apology’ is to mislead the people/public.”

Sanghvi threw more light on this apparent contradiction. “I finally decided that rather than another three years in court, a case which I was fighting and paying for … it’ll be easier if they [Outlook] express regret and withdraw the allegation. So that’s how we settled the case.”

When pointed to his lawyer’s statement claiming that Outlook had published an “apology”, Sanghvi said that the difference between apology and regret was a minor point. “Basically I wanted them to withdraw any insinuation that I was involved in 2G or lobbying for Raja … Whether they say sorry or whether they express regret was a small point, and I just let it be. It’s taken eight years of my life and that’s long enough.”

Dictation from Radia

In 2010, both Outlook (December 27) and Open (November 20) alleged that the Radia tapes revealed Sanghvi taking dictation from Radia and reproducing it in his Hindustan Times column, thus peddling the influence of Radia’s client—the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). Following the allegations, Sanghvi had defended himself by arguing that “a journalist sometimes has to appear sympathetic and even to string along his sources so that they reveal their ultimate motivation … what you say to the source is less important than what you do with the information that emerges from the conversation.”

This was coupled with his claim that the tapes were tampered with, the reports of which he published on his website. The government of the day had said something similar to the apex court in 2012.

In November 2010, Hartosh Singh Bal, then political editor at Open, rebutted Sanghvi’s claims of tape-tampering by demonstrating how others on the tapes also admitted that the HT columnist had simply penned Radia’s dictation. “Yeah, yeah, likha hai, boss. Verbatim,” one of Radia’s colleagues is heard telling her upon reading Sanghvi’s article. In a supposed reference to Sanghvi, the colleague added, “All the people whom you have spoken to with the same argument will realise who is behind this article.”  

Speaking to Newslaundry, Bal described Outlook’s clarification as a “piece of bullshit”. He argued it was Radia’s dictation that turned out to be Sanghvi’s original sin, not the 2G scam. “They [the Radia tapes] were directly connected to the exploitation of natural gas and resources and how he [Sanghvi] was writing columns at the bidding of Reliance. The transcripts I saw had nothing to do with the 2G case. So in that strict sense if Outlook mentioned the 2G case was related to Vir Sanghvi then they probably made a factual mistake as far as I am concerned … What we [Open] did was pretty clear. We spent two months on the story. Vir Sanghvi’s role is pretty clear—he literally wrote a column which was literally dictated by Niira Radia. It was written word-for-word in a way that suited Niira Radia and the Ambanis … It’s pretty damning about Vir Sanghvi and the kind of journalism he does.”

J Gopikrishnan, special correspondent with The Pioneer who broke the 2G case, broadly corroborated Bal’s assertions. “Nothing in those transcripts connects him [Sanghvi] with the 2G scam. The unethical thing was that his [HT] article on the KG basin had the approval of Niira Radia before it was published … but there’s no crime in it. It’s just unethical. As a senior politician once jokingly said, ‘Niira Radia tapes mai criminality nahi hai, immorality hai (The Niira Radia tapes do not reveal criminality, they reveal immorality)’.”

When asked about what he thought of Sanghvi’s return to Indian media years after the Radia tapes, Bal said, “His comeback is a comment on the Indian media. We’ve seen four years of disgusting behaviour by those who wag their tails for the BJP. Vir Sanghvi is their equivalent on the other side … In the aim to please the possibility of an alternative to the BJP, you will see suddenly the likes of Vir Sanghvi being propped up, that’s all I can imagine. The nature of Indian media and corporate involvement and the closeness to power—none of that has changed. What was exposed in the Radia tapes is true even today, and the Congress ecosystem will encourage that kind of thing to happen again if it comes to power.”