MiD DAY hit the stands for the first time in Delhi with its no-holds barred story on Justice Sabharwal. By the end of the day, we were quite confused. Was it possible that nobody, not a soul, had read the exposé? How come Justice Sabharwal himself missed the story?
Did our printers use some special ink on page one, invisible to all but us?
Later, much later, I realized I was not the only one to have heard the deafening silence. Speaking at a seminar in the Press Club of India a few months into the Sabharwal storm, Outlook’s managing editor Vinod Mehta said: “As an editor who launched a news magazine, I can imagine how you must have felt when there was no reaction to your launch story. A launch story is the biggest moment in the life of any editor. That’s his test. And here was a story which exposed the alleged misdeeds of no less than a former chief justice of India but when you get no reaction, you start wondering if you had gone wrong somewhere.”
The silence was deafening but something I could cope with. MiD DAY’s managing director, Tariq Ansari, sent a congratulatory note, praising the story. As for the rest of the world- my world comprising scribes who would do anything for a big news break – it went dumb. The Sabharwal story sat there, on the front pages of MiD-DAY and nary a squeak.
Something odd did happen though. A reporter from a prominent TV channel called up, wanting to interview me on the story. The camera crew reached MiD DAY’s offices, set up shop in our tiny conference room, and as we began to shoot, the reporter received a phone call. I watched on, quite bemused, as he completed what appeared to be a ‘yes sir, yes sir’ conversation on his mobile; asked the cameraman to pack up; and left in a hurry. No apologies or excuses- just like that! Scram, run, scoot.. whatever.
After a couple of months, the same channel carried an exclusive interview of Sabharwal on the MiD DAY stories. We never got a chance to say our piece but the subject of our exposé was on prime time, defending himself. The interview was peppered with bites from two prominent lawyers, red with indignation at the temerity of the fourth estate to level charges against a former chief justice of India. They had little to say about the contents of the story or the charges made in it. Their defence rested on a ‘How dare you!’
“How dare anyone raise an accusing finger at the highest judicial officer of the country.”
We dared because there never was any other option. There couldn’t have been any other option in a democracy that is founded on the principle of Satyamev Jayate, Truth Conquers All.
On the heels of Injustice and on the second day of MiD DAY’S existence in Delhi, I did another cover story. It was about
former cine star and then member of Parliament Shatrughan Sinha refusing to accept sweets from Amitabh Bachchan following the marriage of his son, Abhishek Bachchan, with actress Aishwarya Roy. Shatru was miffed at not having been invited to the wedding and spurned the sweets which the Bachchans sent to him following the celebrations.
TV channels went wild, running the story over and over again with comments from the lead players in this Bollywood drama. Clips of old Shatru-Amitabh starrers were used as a backdrop, as earnest anchors educated viewers about this latest, and by far the most, conclusive proof of the strained relations between the two veteran stars. Parliament was in session and Shatru was besieged by camera crews for comments as he made his way into the House that day.
In the evening, an elated and harassed Bihari Babu called me up. “Vitusha, what have you done? I am being mobbed since this morning.”
What a contrast and what a comment on the way in which the two stories were treated by the media. I had both the stories ready for the launch edition- the one on Sabharwal and the other giving luscious details of the feud between the two superstars. I withheld the Shatru story, choosing with great caution to launch MiD DAY in Delhi with the Sabharwal exposé which I thought was far more newsworthy.
All followed the celluloid gods, the appetite for voyeurism forever seeking satiation. There were no takers for that other story- the one told by a letterbox outside a judge’s house, begging for attention and screaming: “Injustice!’.
But it helped, this reaction to the Shatrughan-Bachchan feud splashed on our front pages. It told me that MiD DAY had indeed arrived in Delhi and the silence over the Sabharwal scoop had nothing to do with the paper’s limited visibility at the launch. The silence was an indication that the tabloid had fiddled with the forbidden. My enfant terrible had gone where not many had dared to go before.
To Be Continued
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