A Sting Operationg Gone Wrong

Within a year of joining Tehelka, I was part of its SIT (Special Investigative Team). In October 2006, I got to do a sting for the first time. I was to meet Manu Sharma and get him to say something about murdering Jessica Lall. On the intervening night of 29-30 April 1999, he had shot Jessica Lall dead at a party in Qutub Colonnade in south Delhi when she refused to serve him a drink. Key eyewitnesses like actor Shayan Munshi and an electrician at Qutub Colonnade, Shiv Das, had turned hostile and failed to identify Manu in court.

Within a year of joining Tehelka, I was part of its SIT (Special Investigative Team). In October 2006, I got to do a sting for the first time. I was to meet Manu Sharma and get him to say something about murdering Jessica Lall. On the intervening night of 29-30 April 1999, he had shot Jessica Lall dead at a party in Qutub Colonnade in south Delhi when she refused to serve him a drink. Key eyewitnesses like actor Shayan Munshi and an electrician at Qutub Colonnade, Shiv Das, had turned hostile and failed to identify Manu in court.

In October 2006, my colleague Vineet Khare was just about to finish his three-month-long investigation that pointed to the sordid reality of how Venod Sharma, a Congress politician and industrialist, doled out bags of cash to secure his son Manu’s future, the Delhi Police’s strongarm tactics against the witnesses, how vital clues were ignored, how the Judiciary did not ask relevant questions and how the defence exploited every lacuna to bail him out. This ensured that Manu walked out a free man in February 2006, acquitted on lack of evidence at the trial stage. In December 2006, however, the High Court convicted Manu and gave him a life term, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in April 2010.

In two days, Vineet’s story would be out. My editor, Tarun Tejpal, wanted us to try and get Manu on camera saying something about the case, hopefully self-incriminating. At that point, I was the only one available who could be trusted with a spy-camera as Vineet was away in Mumbai giving final touches to his story. In the past, I had carried out some spy-cam drills in office to get my camera angles right. A sting operation is futile if the character in question is not captured in the frame saying something detrimental to his personal interest. So far to my credit was just one successful in-house sting that I had carried out on my immediate boss, Harinder Baweja. She made me delete the footage.

The spy camera was hidden in a shirt button, third from the top. It was black like the rest of the buttons, only slightly thicker. That worried me. A thin wire crossed my torso diagonally inside the shirt, connecting the spy-cam to a recorder the size of a cigarette pack that was lodged in one of my trouser pockets. The recorder could store footage for an hour. So I couldn’t switch on the spy-cam too early. I decided to do it just before I entered Manu’s office, a tall solitary building next to Okhla Mandi in South Delhi. I was acutely aware that if I got caught in the act, my life could be at risk.

Sting journalism involves playing a character. A character that would induce or make the culprit comfortable enough to say things he is not supposed to say. He would never say such things if I revealed my true intention, or the fact that I was a journalist. A sting operation for me is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve a larger goal. It is proactive journalism where you don’t follow news, but try to make it.

I posed as the relative of a low-level police functionary who had critical information about the case that I was willing to share only with Manu as I could not trust anyone else. I procured the mobile number of his friend and told him this. I was given an appointment at 11 am the next day. But the friend didn’t promise that I would get to see Manu. The ploy was to tell him something he already knew as a revelation so that he may be tempted to say something about the case that might, directly or indirectly, prove his involvement.

I was made to wait in a small room and was offered water with the promise that I would get to see Manu soon. I drank two glass of water, yet my throat felt dry. The camera was rolling and 20 minutes had passed. It was a tough situation to be in; I was restless but had to ooze composure for I was apprehensive that the room was bugged and I was being monitored. I never looked down at my shirt buttons.

Then Manu arrived. He was in the other room discussing something that I could not follow simply because my heart was pounding so loudly. I was escorted out of the room to find him standing in front of me in blue jeans and a white shirt. He was talking to someone of his age-group, immaculately dressed in formals. I thought he was one of the lawyers to whom his father had paid a fortune to get him out of this mess. He looked at me momentarily, without acknowledging my presence, and continued to talk. After two long minutes, he turned to me to say “yes”. I told him what I had to say, my voice quivering. He heard me out patiently. It didn’t interest him much. He said “I know” and insisted that I should leave “only after having a cup of tea”. He did start to talk by saying that he didn’t even know “that woman” when the other gentleman advised him not to talk about the case. I was given the number of one of his lawyers in case I had useful information to share, and was asked to drop my phone number with the receptionist. I was sure he was in my spycam frame and the footage was excellent.

By the time I walked out of the building, 45 minutes had passed. I had been told that it was fine if the camera shut down on its own. But I was keen to switch it off. The green light on the recorder was supposed to turn red and then blink a few times before it switched off. It did turn red but didn’t blink, and so I pressed the ‘off’ button harder. I was getting jittery. The light turned green and started recording again. I was not very far from the building, facing a boundary wall at a secluded stretch, posing as if I was urinating while trying to switch off the device. Nervous as I was, I pressed the button far too hard till all lights were off. Later, I realised the video had been erased. Tejpal was disappointed, yet excited enough to tell a colleague, “He just met Manu Sharma.”

Jessica Lallsting operationTehelka