On Monday, NDTV claimed to have exclusively accessed two reports by investigative agencies that are trying to determine whether a controversial arms dealer called Sanjay Bhandari bought a “benami” property for Robert Vadra in London.

The reports, said the news channel, comprise details from Bhandari’s questioning by the agencies and emails allegedly sent by Vadra and his executive assistant Manoj Arora. While NDTV said it “cannot confirm the authenticity of the emails”, the channel reported that the London property in question — “12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square” — was bought for 1.9 million pounds (Rs 19 crore) in October 2009 and sold in June 2010.

The aftermath of this news break was a predictable mix of reactions accusatory as well as self-congratulatory. Barkha Dutt led the NDTV pack, admonishing NewsX and Times Now for passing off “our Vadra Exclusive as your own”; teaming up with India Today managing editor Rahul Kanwal to bash Times Now some more; and thanking other media organisations, like Indian Express and Huffington Post India, for following up on their exclusive story.

On Wednesday, things took a different turn. It started with Ritu Sarin’s report in the Indian Express, which said Bhandari had acknowledged exchanging emails with Vadra and Arora about renovating a London apartment. The

report, which attributed the admission to income tax officials, said the property in question was located in Bryanston Square and registered in the name of Dubai-based Mayfair Properties, but stopped short of confirming the address mentioned by NDTV.

On Wednesday evening, Firstpost ran a story that sparked a virtual slugfest between the news portal and NDTV. Titled “Exclusive: Robert Vadra had nothing to do with shady London home deal”, it provided the official records of “12, Ellerton House, 11 Bryanston Square, London”, the address which Firstpost claimed was mentioned by NDTV. Going on to say that the owners are not as mentioned in the Indian Express report, Sandipan Sharma wrote, “The charge against Vadra, available information suggests, is false and baseless.”

On Thursday, a report by Vijay Rana and Jay Mazoomdaar in the Indian Express said land records revealed that the property in question had been purchased by the Sharjah-based firm Mayfair Investment FZE. The report gave the address as “Flat 12, 12 Bryanston Square, London W1H 2DN” — not exactly the same as either NDTV or Firstpost’s finds — providing as evidence a clipping of the title register extract. Throughout Thursday, Dutt maintained that the Firstpost story was wrong as both the pin code and the ’11’ before Bryanston Square were incorrect.

At 5.16pm on Thursday, Firstpost published a story titled “If it’s a London House for Robert Vadra, likely it’s not 12 Ellerton House’. In it, Sharma pulled his punches. While trying to prove that “12 Ellerton House, 11 Bryanston Square, London” and “12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square, London” are one and the same, he effectively repudiated the conclusions of his previous report:

“Vadra may or may not have bought any or many of them. The Firstpost report was neither meant to be a clean chit to Vadra nor a rebuttal of reports and efforts of other media houses.”

At 7pm on Thursday, NDTV posted a story on its website, titled “Mapping The London Home Being Investigated As Benami For Robert Vadra”, with Dutt’s byline. The story was updated at 11.28pm to include the names of Ruby Dhingra and Suparna Singh.

As evidence, the story had two clippings of a title register, one of which was the extract produced by Indian Express earlier in the day. The date of last sale validates what was reported by the channel after accessing the investigation reports, as does the price stated to have been paid on that date. However, the two don’t quite add up.

What NDTV said

The original report was about “a London home (12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square) bought for 19 lakh GBP (Rs. 19 crores) in October 2009 and sold in June 2010.” The denial issued by Vadra’s lawyers to NDTV‘s Tanima Biswas — carried in full along with the report — had this address: “House No 12, Ellerton House, Bryanston Square, London”. Which suggests it was the subject of the channel’s enquiry. No flat number is mentioned. The address of Ellerton House within Bryanston Square is not specified and neither is a postcode.

However, in its most recent report, NDTV provided the ownership records of “Flat 12, 12 Bryanston Square”, insisting that this address was the same as the one in their original report. Aside from the discrepancy in the two addresses, the title register said this flat was purchased by Mayfair Investment FZE for 1.9 million pounds (Rs 19 crore) on 18 June 2010. Monday’s report said the property was sold in June 2010 and the figure of “19 lakh GBP (Rs. 19 crores)” was attributed to an earlier sale from October 2009.

What Firstpost said

Aside from the fact that it was quick to give Vadra a clean chit and quicker still to cast aspersions on the work of other media outlets, the web portal’s first report was about “12, Ellerton House, 11 Bryanston Square, London”, which they said was the same as the address mentioned by NDTV. This second report was supposed to be an explanation.

What Indian Express said

The newspaper attributed “12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square” to the NDTV report and mentioned only “Bryanston Square’” when a mismatch was discovered. It reported the address as “Flat 12, 12 Bryanston Square, London W1H 2DN” after carrying out their own investigation. While refusing to “comment on what other media outlets have reported”, Mazoomdaar told Newslaundry, “On day one, we reported what was aired by a channel. On day two, we found that the registry records of the named property did not match and, therefore, we did not confirm any address in our report. On day three, we could confirm the actual address from UK land records and reported it.”

What Newslaundry says

To anyone who can be bothered to look them up, land registry records of the United Kingdom are publicly available for purchase online – three pounds each for title register and title plan. One cannot be read without the other. While the title plan shows where the property is on a close-up map of the area in which it’s located, the explanation is (along with ownership details) in the register.

Also, the records differentiate between “flat number” and “house number”. What NDTV initially had from their sources – which Vadra’s lawyers were quick to repudiate – was a house number. What the channel is providing now is a flat number, the same as Indian Express.

Newslaundry did a little online investigation of its own (if you end up liking it, kindly reimburse us for the whole or part of the 12 pounds we spent on purchasing the official documents. That’s Rs 1162.63 on June 3, 2016, just FYI). On the official UK land registry website, there are three types of enquiries – quick, detailed and map.

The quick enquiry asks for a “House no/name” and requires that a postcode be provided. While there was no postcode in the initial NDTV report, subsequent reports have mentioned three different postcodes – W1H 7FF, W1H 2DN and W1H 2DQ.

A quick search for “12, Ellerton House” in any of these postal areas throws up the same error message: “Sorry, we have been unable to find a property that matches your enquiry. Please try searching in a different area.”

Drop the “12” and search only for “Ellerton House” within “W1H 2DN” and the song remains the same. So, as per UK land registry records, there is no Ellerton House within the postcode that Indian Express reported and NDTV is standing by.

Change the postcode to one of the two mentioned in the initial Firstpost report, though, and there are many results for “Ellerton House”: 25 under W1H 2DQ and 23 under W1H 7FF. These 23 pertain to flats numbered 1 to 23 (sole exception: 13 is numbered as 12A, ostensibly to avoid a jinx) in “Ellerton House, 11, Bryanston Square, London, W1H 2DQ”. The postcode was changed from 7FF to 2DQ in June 2000. There are two extra results under the new postcode, both pertaining to Ellerton House as a whole, but with different addresses in Bryanston Square (“11” and “10-12”).

To avoid postcodes altogether, one can use detailed enquiry, which asks for some but not all of the following: Flat number, House no/name, Street name, Town and Postcode. While there may be confusion about some of these, there is no doubt about two facts: Town is London and Street name is Bryanston Square. That and avoiding postcodes makes the queries a tad simpler (or at least a tad less complex).

Let’s first check out the address initially reported by NDTV – “12, Ellerton House”. If one specifies 12 as flat number and Ellerton House as house no/name, the result is “Flat 12, Ellerton House, 11, Bryanston Square, London, W1H 2DQ”, which is the property whose records Firstpost initially presented. If one leaves Flat number blank and enters “12, Ellerton House” as “House no/name”, which is the query Vadra’s lawyers seem to be responding to, no results are found.

If one drops the “12” and only mentions Ellerton House as House no/name, one gets the same set of results as the quick enquiries revealed.

It is only when one drops Ellerton House but retains “12” as either flat or house number that the property whose ownership records were presented on Thursday — first by Indian Express and then by NDTV — turn up, alongside the property that seemed to be but, in fact, wasn’t.

None of this takes anything away from the fact that NDTV was the first to report on this story. Nor is any of this to suggest that the channel initially got the address wrong. Over time, postcodes change, nomenclatures evolve. What has been purportedly mentioned in emails under the scanner need not be the same as what is officially present in land registry records.

There is, however, a case to be made for due diligence. Like we mentioned before, the title register cannot be read as a standalone document – a part of it explains the map in the title plan, which is as readily available as the title register. Newslaundry accessed both documents for “Flat 12, Ellerton House, 11, Bryanston Square” as well as “Flat 12, 12, Bryanston Square”, and discovered that they are both located in the same composite block but on different floors and with different orientations.

From the maps obtained from the title plans of the two properties in question, it is clear that 10 to 12, Bryanston Square (including 11), is a composite block. However, the properties seem to be distinct. “Flat 12, Ellerton House, 11 Bryanston Square” is a fourth floor flat in the apartment complex. “Flat 12, 12, Bryanston Square” is spread across the ground floor and the basement and has a different orientation than the former. As of now, there as more questions than answers. For instance, are the two apartments in the same complex? If yes, why do apartments on different floors have different postcodes?

The primacy of breaking a story – as well as discrediting others’ breaking stories – over running basic fact-checks has opened a can of worms that has blunted the impact of what is commendable work by all the media organisations involved. Instead of fresh revelations, we are getting flame wars on Twitter. Fingers are being pointed, apologies are being demanded, details are simultaneously being changed and stubbornly stuck to.

Apology or no apology, Firstpost needs to own up to the fact that they jumped the gun and were too quick to issue a clean chit to Vadra, a clean chit that discredited the work done by NDTV and Indian Express.

NDTV, on the other hand, needs to clarify a few specifics. Why did they replace “12, Ellerton House, Bryanston Square” with “Flat 12, 12, Bryanston Square”? If they are the same, how are they the same? Why was Firstpost‘s “Flat 12, Ellerton House, 11, Bryanston Square” wrong when they themselves say that Ellerton House “refers to a complex (10-12 Bryanston Square)”? And if the documents showed that the payment of 1.9 million pounds was in June 2010, why did they initially report the date as October 2009?

Above all, why did NDTV change these specifics without full disclosure?

The author can be contacted on Twitter @causticji