The proverbial skeletons are tumbling out of the Tehelka closet and it’s not just one closet, it seems there are scores of closets scattered all over the country. The rape proceedings are going on and both social media and mainstream media are giving ample attention to that. But ever since the other murky details of the entire Tehelka empire have started emerging in the public domain, certain people have started complaining that why the attention is being diverted to other issues that have no connection with Tejpal’s act.

A web-based newspaper recently published the financial wheeling-dealings Tejpal and company have been carrying out in the name of keeping the secular ramparts of the country intact. Take for instance the shares that were being bought and sold to make good profits. A share whose actual value was a paltry Rs 10, was sold for Rs 13,189 per share, getting huge profits for those who sold them, including Tejpal’s close family members and even the erstwhile managing editor Shoma Chaudhury.

Many spurious companies are suspected to be involved in taking care of the cash flow of the news organisation that wasn’t making much profits and was in fact, in the red. The companies that stopped existing within two years were pumping in cash at regular intervals.

Tejpal and his family own multiple properties. There is a farmhouse in Delhi, a sprawling six-room villa in Goa, a guesthouse at the outskirts of Nainital, a kothi in Jungpura. And these are just the properties that have come to public attention. For all we know, he might have three or four times more than this. This is the condition when his organisation registered a Rs 66 crore loss.

On top of that, he was also hobnobbing with the deceased liquor baron Ponty Chaddha, and again, this is also just one instance that somehow has been brought to light.

Everybody knows that the news organisation used professional call girls for a few of their sting operations so it won’t be surprising if their connections are traced into these circles too.

The cosy Tejpal club has started grumbling through various TV interviews and published articles: What is the use of digging up all this dirt when people should just focus on his individual act? What does it all have to do with his “despicable” conduct?

This attitude reeks of monumental hypocrisy. And not just hypocrisy, it also reeks of fear of getting caught in the whirlwind of the shady world Tejpal had created around Tehelka in the name of protecting the secular fabric of the country and taking on the “communal” Hindutva forces.

Didn’t it ever occur to these luminaries how their buddy was acquiring so much wealth despite making losses? Are all these ancestral properties? Didn’t they ever visit a few of these properties for their cocktail eveningparties and wonder how Tarun Tejpal is so rich? Doesn’t he promote a socialist cause? Don’t all these friends-turned-foes who self-righteously flaunt socialist garbs ever wonder how their friends and colleagues don’t ever live truly socialist lifestyles?

It is this feeling that troubles them. As smart as they try to show themselves to be, it is a natural question that comes to everybody’s mind – how come they never knew? How come they never noticed or questioned his affluence? Exactly what explains the presence of so many properties and that too, not LIG DDA flats but sprawling villas, farmhouses and guesthouses at prime locations that must have cost him more than Rs 100 crore combined?

The only answer is that they always knew. They always knew that something fishy was going on but they were only interested in keeping things as they were to maintain the comfort level they have attained. They don’t want their regular cocktail parties disturbed. They don’t want the gap between the haves and have-nots filled by such unsavoury exposures. They want to maintain the status quo of that privileged elite class for as long as possible.

This is precisely the reason they are grumbling. If it were just the rape case – cannibalistic as they are – according to the expression Tejpal used for Robert De Niro, they don’t give a fu** about him. They’re just worried about the fact that if his other sins are brought to light one way or another, they too will get dragged in.