Pradeep Sharma can’t play ‘video’ game for long
Amidst the extensive media coverage of the Tehelka rape case involving its editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal, IAS officer Pradeep Sharma gave several interviews across news channels talking about the alleged snooping on a young woman architect. In these interviews, there arise some contradictions and questions as under:
1. In this interview telecast on ABP News, Sharma says (at the 1:10 mark) that the Modi Government got his house raided and his computer and other material confiscated. All this, he says, was done because Modi suspected he had an obscene clipping involving the woman which could embarrass Modi. He then tells the interviewer “halaa ki aisi koi clip thi nahi … chor ki daadhi mein tinka” (“however, there wasn’t any such clip” followed by a Hindi proverb. However, in the very same interview (at the 3:21 mark), he says he got the clipping through an anonymous letter involving the woman, the fact of which he shared with friends. In fact, in his affidavit before the Supreme Court in 2011, he had actually stated (his remarks were expunged by the visibly disgusted Bench hearing this case) that he did indeed confirm the existence of such a video clipping.
Question: Mr Sharma, is there a clipping or is there not one? Why this contradiction?
2. Another instance of Sharma contradicting himself can be found in this interview to NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain. After the 13:20 mark, Sharma says that the reason the Modi Government has initiated action against him for alleged illegalities is because Modi thought Sharma was in the possession of the video clip which could also damage Modi’s image and rise to the top. The impression he seems to have given Jain and the NDTV audience is that though Modi thought there was a clipping, there was actually none. Jain confirms this to me via this tweet.
Question: Once again, why this contradiction, Mr Sharma? Or, is Sreenivasan Jain misreporting your statements?
3. He claims to be so close to the woman’s family that, according to him, the first meal that he ate as soon as he was arrested was brought by her parents. He then said that her parents made Sharma talk to her on the phone and that she was upset at what the Gujarat Chief Minister had done to Pradeep Sharma. All this he talks about in an interview with IBNLive reporter here and many other interviews. In another interview, he also said that the woman confided in him showing him the SMSs Modi allegedly sent her.
Question: If he was so close with the woman and her family, how did he then have the moral gumption to share the fact of a sexually explicit video involving her with his friends at the time he received it? Why did he destroy her reputation by gossiping with his friends about it? In any event, let us assume that the reason he shared this with his friends was to get their advice. Why did he, thereafter, allude to this clipping in his affidavit before the Supreme Court – an affidavit, which is, and can easily, be a part of public record? What’s worse? In that affidavit, he had even named the woman in question.
Lastly, even if we assume that the affidavit would have been read by, at the most, a few hundred people, why is he now coming on several TV channels saying with confidence that the obscene clipping he got and saw did involve the woman and thereby destroying her dignity with this widespread tamasha? Is this how he plans to repay the alleged trust and proximity the woman and her parents share with him? Is, or was, the family really close to him as he keeps claiming? Doesn’t the unabashed manner in which he shared the existence of an obscene video he conveniently got from an “anonymous source” depict a deliberate disregard for the woman’s dignity and privacy? What kind of a person, who claims he cares for a woman, does that?
Sharma’s rather contrived attempt at creating a sensation through these interviews remind us of 2011 when former IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt made a wild statement that he was at the meeting where he heard Modi ordering the police to go slow on Hindu rioters. He was hailed as a ‘Singham’, taking on the mighty Narendra Modi. As we now know, the SIT has rubbished his awfully contradictory claims with clinical precision, the Amicus Curiae has questioned his tactics and tricks, his wife had to suffer the embarrassment of a colossal electoral loss in the Gujarat 2012 election despite being supported by the Congress, and the Union Home Ministry has had to eventually agree that he needs to be dismissed from the IPS.
Pradeep Sharma, it seems evident, will meet the same fate. Such is his desperation to highlight the ‘video’ to create a sensation in the media, little does he realise that it does not take long to figure out the contradictions in his tales. This is just the beginning.
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/11/28/pradeep-sharma-cant-play-video-game-for-long-162662.html