Radia tapes featuring senior scribes create stir

NEWDELHI: The limelight has now shifted from the 2G spectr­um scam to the media after tapes of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia's phone conversation with prominent journalists including NDTV's Barkha Dutt and Hindustan Times columnist Vir Sang­hvi, were printed by news weeklies Open and Outlook triggering a frenzy, particularly in the cyber world.

NDTV posted a strong rebuttal on its website terming the insinuation that Barkha lobbied for A Raja as "unsubstantiated, baseless and defamatory" and threatened action against Open which hit the stands on Thursday with the transcripts.

"Struck by the bizarre irony of being accused of favouring a man I have never met (Raja) and have always attacked in print and on TV. Gnite!" was one of Barkha's several Tweets on Thursday night.

Open also had Radia's conversation with Sanghvi in which he is seen as agreeing to give a particular point of view in his column on the legal dispute between Reliance's Ambani brothers and also favouring Raja.

The Outlook edition, which was out on Friday, carried the story forward by printing Radia's conversation with a whole lot of influential people, including Ratan Tata, Raja, Financial Express editor M K Venu and former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhatt­acharya, among others.

Transcript of India Today editor Prabhu Chawla's conv­ersation with Radia features him talking about the legal tussle between the Ambani brothers and goes into the aspect of fixing judgments.

Sanghvi wrote on his website that there was nothing to suggest in the transcript that he lobbied for Raja.