We always knew there was something funny about Outlook editor Vinod Mehta, maybe something in his eyes. Something creepy. Shekhar Gupta, Indian Express editor-in-chief, narrates an incident:
Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta happened to be sitting to her [Benazir Bhutto's] left and as the conversation got more animated, he, as his friends and TV audiences well know, leaned forward to make his point, often touching her by now ample arm in a wonderfully warm gesture of informality. Benazir stopped me for a five-minute tattle as we were all leaving. She talked about this and that, and then said: "I did not know your Delhi journalists get so familiar with leaders. Tell me how would Sonia Gandhi handle that?" [link]Well, in buses and commuter trains it often starts out as a warm and innocent gesture of cordiality. Of course this one incident doesn't prove anything. Perhaps we should ask female staffers of Outlook magazine.
3 comments:
Vinod Mehta is a creepy, graceless, uncouth, and dishonest person. Mehta came to edit the Jaico's The Sunday Observer in Bombay in the early 1980s with the reputation of being an unprincipled user of people exploiting their talents for his enrichment. Mehta was detested by most of the Observer's staffers who were at his mercy. In those pre-electronic telecom days, before the days of EPABX, the Observer like all offices had an antiquated manually operated switch managed by the receptionist. VM bullied the receptionist into pathching others' extensions onto his phone, whenever he suspected a reporter or writer of criticising him behind his back. Every so often he would evesdrop on their conversations, and once in a while when their telecons became particularly critical, VM would interrupt the telecon and shout down the otehr two people on the line. VM and Tarun Tejpal's slimy role in the cricket betting scandal has never been investigated thoroughly. For a few years the two kept at the story never revealing who the linchpin of the racket was, while all the time trying to foist the blame on Kapil Dev thru inuendo and aspersion. Finally when Jadeja and Azhar were implicated in the scandal by a sommission of inquiry, VM tried to claim credit for the story. VM and Outlook played the same dirty game during the Kargil war accusing almost the entire top brass of the Army of treason, and claiming to have uncovered certain files that contained correspondence regarding a cover up of intelligence reports prior to the war. When Gen.Ashok Mehta VM's veteran brother rubbished the allegation following his own investigations, and the Army itself rubbished the allegations showing that the claimed files and their alleged sequence numbers were entirely a fabrication - as the Army does not follow such a system of numbering - VM like a rat slunk away. Three years back following the arrest of Jayendra Sarasvati of the Kanchi Matham, VM wrote a scurrillious article, for the BBC, besmirching the sanyasi and his matham. Following a strongly mounted campaign that refuted every allegation levelled by VM, and showing that VM's articl was simply slander, BBC took down the article from its web archives. Again VM shut his trap and slunk away like a rat. VM is piece of slimy trash that of the sort you would scrape off your shoes when you step into a friend's home or yours. It is not at all surprising that the man can be so cheap. He's cheaper than you can imagine.
He's quite queer...the way he is in love with Sonia Gandhi
> Well, in buses and commuter trains it often starts out as a warm and innocent gesture of cordiality.
Well said!
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