Operation Sting

Let’s face it – sting operations are to news what nudity is to cinema. So it is hardly a surprise that in these times when television news is a fiercely frantic TRP battle, news channels sting with alarming frequency and unbridled zest. Many sting ops, expectedly, are plain ridiculous and serve no purpose other than for making primetime news seem more like entertainment. Some stings, however, over the last decade or so, have managed to be what sting operations are supposed to be – a powerful tool of investigative journalism. Here’s a low-down on stings – executed by various news channels in India in the last couple of years – which have succeeded in revealing truths and of course skyrocketing TRPs.

1. NDTV evidently doesn’t seem to be a big fan of sting operations. Its exposé of Sanjeev Nanda is perhaps the only serious sting it has undertaken. In 1999, Sanjeev Nanda – son of arms dealer Suresh Nanda and the grandson of former Navy chief Admiral SM Nanda – had run over six people including three policemen with his BMW while driving back home, drunk, after a party. Nanda, a Wharton Business School graduate, came from a rich and powerful family and had an influential lawyer defending him. In short, he had everything which could help him escape the long arm of the law in India. However, a sting by Poonam Agarwal on May 30, 2007, revealed that Nanda’s lawyer R K Anand was trying to persuade the prime prosecution witness to change his statement. Following the sting, there was much hue and cry about the validity of stings as a legitimate form of journalism. NDTV aggressively defended its decision and made moralistic pronouncements of their noble intent. The court even applauded Poonam Agarwal for her exemplary and brave journalism. Sadly, all of it amounted to very little in the end. Sanjeev Nanda was a free man after just two years in prison and a few crores in fines.

Another sting that NDTV was a part of was in collaboration with Tehelka – perhaps the pioneer of sting journalism in the nation – where they caught on camera a number of cops, across ranks, blaming women for bringing sexual violence upon themselves. NDTV India – the Hindi version of the channel – in February 2011 had done a sting to expose how Delhi’s government hospitals function and highlighted how even a post-mortem comes with a price.

2. India TV, ever since its advent in 2004, has become quite the torchbearer of sting-ops in India, having carried out stings on almost everything under the sun from sex rackets to wife-swapping. The one that is their flagship sting is the one on Shakti Kapoor where they literally caught Kapoor with his pants down. Well, almost. While the revelation that the casting couch existed in Bollywood wasn’t exactly the biggest disclosure of the decade, the fact that the exposé showed a known Bollywood star made it big news. In its relentless pursuit of truth (since there’s very little pursuit of news), India TV’s stung everyone from cricket umpires to pimps. In case you care about either them or their victims, you could indulge yourself here.

3. CNN-IBN, for all the allegations of being full of fluff, was responsible for the sting that perhaps resulted in the maximum political casualty. The channel caught on camera an aide of Amar Singh – who was then a part of the UPA government – giving money to a Bharatiya Janata Party MP to get his support on a vote pertaining to the Indo-US nuclear deal in July 2008. The sting popularly known as the Cash-for-Votes scam triggered off a series of allegations and counter-allegations in what turned out to be a major embarrassment for everyone involved, with Indian politics and politicians looking uglier than ever.

CNN-IBN stung again in April 2013 when they exposed private medical colleges selling seats – a practice so embedded in the system that hardly anyone took notice.

4. A channel doesn’t really need too much of anything else when you have one hour of Arnab Goswami every day and Times Now seems to be more than aware of that. But just last month when Arnab decided to go on a holiday (yes, that did happen), Times Now decided only a sting could ensure people didn’t switch loyalties. What followed was a sting on police inaction in riot-hit Muzaffarnagar. The exposé seemed genuine enough except for the fact that the channel very conveniently decided to stick to police officers low in the food-chain who really have very little say in decision-making.

5. Aaj Tak and Headlines Today are friendly siblings who share whatever they have and their love extends to their telecast of sting ops. They too did a sting on what happened in Muzaffarnagar. The exposé showed how politicians encouraged the riots for petty political gains.

Another sting which both channels telecast with a great deal of enthusiasm was the one on Asaram Bapu – which was actually shot three years before it was telecast. Another sting that two channels carried out was on how Varun Gandhi was bailed out by the Uttar Pradesh government following his hate speech in Pilibhit before the 2009 General Elections. Aaj Tak also has to its credit what seems like an exclusive sting on a sex racket in Bhopal.

One of the most spoken of sting ops Aaj Tak did was Operation Dhritarashtra. The sting op (which was carried out by Aniruddha Bahal’s Cobrapost) claimed to blow the lid on misappropriation of government funds by a trust for physically handicapped people run by Salman Khurshid and his wife. The exposé claimed that the Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust had siphoned off this money and never conducted the camps or handed out the aids. For some reason, very few media houses took forward this story. Not that we heard Khurshid complaining about the situation.

Another sting Aaj Tak carried out in collaboration with Cobrapost was the Cash for Questions scam popularly known as Operation Duryodhana. The channel caught on camera 11 MPs – across parties – accepting money to ask questions in Parliament.

6. Zee News’ relationship with stings has been bittersweet to say the least. Its much publicised sting on the Jindal group – owned by MP Naveen Jindal – meant to indict Jindal and his company for an alleged involvement in the coal block allocation scam backfired when Naveen Jindal lodged an FIR accusing Zee News of attempting to extort Rs 100 crore from him. Jindal presented his company’s own sting against the channel to support his case. Zee News’ editors were arrested and the ensuing chaos just contributed towards the notion that sting-ops are messy business. The Jindal story is pretty much all Zee News has done in terms of a sting-op. Wise, one must say.

7. News X – the latest entrant to the TV News brigade in India – hasn’t actually done a sting as yet and it’s only sizable contribution to the cause of sting-ops in India has been to get “BJP’s Prakash Javadekar to admit to his presence in a meeting shown in a sting operation done in connection to the Tulsi Prajapati encounter case”. The perpetrator of the sting however is not known. News X’s reluctance to sting could be because they believe that if the family members of those who own the channel live in glass houses or in prison houses they mustn’t throw stones.

8. Since we are on the topic of Manu Sharma en famille, the list of sting ops will be incomplete without mentioning erstwhile Star News’ – now ABP News – landmark sting on actor Shayan Munshi which led to the Jessica Lal murder being reopened. And paved the way for the conviction of the main accused Manu Sharma.

The legitimacy of sting-ops is and will always remain dubious and much contested. Not that that’s stopped our news channels’ from conducting sting ops. After all, Fox Mulder did tell us that the truth is out there. And our news channels are only going in search of it. For every detractor of the sting op, there are others who would argue that the end justifies the means. Write in with the sting op which you felt made the most impact in India.