Tehelka.com and the Delhi rapes – new India’s media conscience

Those behind the investigative tehelka.com – an English language and independent magazine – have shown courage and determination in exposing some of India’s worst problems and those responsible, from government corruption (exchange of huge bribes) to the male chauvinistic exploiters of women – not least a majority of Indian police chiefs in some states. Their excellent and exhaustive work concerning this latter issue is showcased below here. 

The Delhi Rape case highlights the parlous situation in India as regards sexual abuse. The rape statistics in India are no doubt related to the very widespread sexual abuse of children, both girls AND boys. According to the governmental official report on Child Sex Abuse in India, fifty-three per cent of a very large sample across the whole of India said they’d been sexually abused, mostly by a person known to them. That is over 20 million child victims! Over 23% of boys had suffered serious forms of sexual abuse! (See more here) The shameful passivity of the Indian government and police towards the known and documented sexual abuse in India by their own nationals seems at last to have reached the agenda. But the very widespread homosexual abuse of boys still passes in silence!  Due not least to this, India’s most popular holy man, Sathya Sai Baba, was never brought to book, despite a huge mass of evidence and testimony available on-line from many well-informed sources (not least here). It is thus beyond all reasonable doubt that Sai Baba was a major sexual abuser of boys and young men and deeply involved in the murder of four of his devotees in 1993. What actually happened in Prashanthi Nilayam on June 6, 1993, was that – after the four had intruded and knifed to death two of Sai Baba’s servants – the Puttaparthi police cold-bloodedly shot dead in a major hail of bullets (after some hours of discussion) the four devotees who were armed only with knives. It was widely suspected that sexual abuses by Sai Baba were a motive for at least some of his four executed ex-students. That was far worse than what the deeply discredited Delhi police just said and did! The Sai Baba bedroom murders were reported by various eyewitnesses and news media as having been done at the behest of Sathya Sai Baba! Hundreds of former followers have testified showing how he was a major exploiter of people involved in many alleged criminal activities for all of which he was protected at the highest level in government and the judiciary!

Tehelka have since 2000 posted a few articles fairly critical about Sathya Sai Baba, but after his funeral was attended by top Indian personalities, have also written articles showing the supportive testimony of believers. This without comment of Sai Baba having been widely reported as involved in criminal activities for all of which he was protected at the highest level in government and the judiciary! It is therefore to be hoped that Tehelka writers will continue their upright and fearless exposure of the huge problems of sexual abuse, ALSO against boys, but cardinally so in the case of Sathya Sai Baba will help avoid the ridicule in which it is held by all who know how Prime Ministers, Presidents and Supreme Court judges and other Indian luminaries have worshipped Sathya Sai Baba, a self-proclaimed God in Human Form, creator of the Universe and come to save all of humanity. See his pronouncements on himself and his mission here. Meanwhile, tehelka’s efforts to put the horrendous rape and murder in Delhi in its wider perspective –  as showcased below – is an admirable example for other Indian media to learn from:-

An earlier Tehelka article entitled ‘ASHRAM MANDIRAM: fortress of solitude’ made valid comments about Sathya Sai Baba and his ashrams, and with good reason. Unfortunately, this article was dropped in the new set of archives and even from the Internet archive wayback machine. It was however preserved here. Another critical article also dropped was ‘Is the Sai Baba’s empire beginning to disintegrate?‘