For years, Rana Ayyub’s questionable journalism has been called out by Indians on the right and the center. Now her work is being attacked by those on the far-left as well.
Swati Chaturvedi has unloaded on Rana Ayyub in an astonishing Twitter attack. In a series of tweets, Swati Chaturvedi hinted that Rana Ayyub was a ‘fraud’, said that her book had been called by the the Supreme Court as being ‘based upon surmises, conjectures, and suppositions’, and perhaps most interestingly, shared an old Facebook post of jailed cop Sanjiv Bhat. In the Facebook post, Sanjiv Bhat has detailed the salacious past of an unnamed ‘dusky chain smoking journalist’. Swati Chaturvedi went ahead and named Rana Ayyub as the journalist in question in a tweet.
The post by Sanjiv Bhat seems to indicate that the unnamed journalist, who Swati Chaturvedi identifies as Rana Aayub, had an affair with an IPS officer, which was subsequently discovered by the authorities. Sanjiv Bhat goes on to claim that the unnamed woman was hand-in-glove with the Modi-Amit Shah duo, shielding them from scrutiny while pretending to investigate the Gujarat riots. Here is the post in full:
A little known story from Gujarat: The CBI investigations into Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Tulsiram Prajapati encounters were at their peak. The fates of the then Home Minister and the then Chief Minister were hanging fire. A young investigative journalist was tasked by her magazine to cover the CBI investigations and look for a story that would sell. She came to Ahmedabad and tried tapping sources in the Police and CBI. Unfortunately for her, information from the State Police or the CBI was not very forthcoming. She tried her luck with a Ahmedabad based lawyer activist who was pursuing the fake encounter cases in court. The lawyer activist fell easy prey to the charms of the dusky chain smoking journalist and was more than happy to share juicy case details with her. Stories started taking shape. The journalist wanted more. She got in touch with the duo of IPS officers from the CBI who were leading the investigation. The younger of the two IPS officers was attracted to the journalist and she was attracted to him. The inevitable happened. Their meetings increased in frequency. Information started flowing easily. The magazine continued getting good stories. And the young lovers continued having a good time. But little did the two lovers know at that time that the Government Guesthouses where they used to meet for their amorous peccadilloes were discreetly bugged by the operatives of the State Police. All their shenanigans were captured in lurid colourful detail. The tables turned. The young CBI officer was made aware of the irrefutable video evidence against him. The hunter suddenly became the hunted. Deals were struck. The investigation was derailed. The encounter cases were diluted to the point of no repair. The word eventually reached the CBI bosses in Delhi and the IPS officer was removed from the investigation and repatriated to his parent cadre state. But irreparable damage had already been done. The young journalist was given a choice: face public shaming along with the officer or help in derailing the efforts of the lawyer activist who was heavily besotted with her easy charms. She chose the latter. Things moved as planned. She was used to collect dirt on the lawyer activist. The scandalous dirt was smartly used to deter the lawyer activist from pursuing certain sensitive issues before the Commission of Inquiry that was inquiring into the Gujarat Riots of 2002. The lawyer activist eventually withdrew himself completely from the Commission proceedings despite being the only legal representative of the hapless victims. The young journalist wrote a titillating and fanciful account of her journalistic exploits in Gujarat, but took exceptional care to gloss over the role of the then Chief Minister in engineering the Gujarat Carnage. In return, the book was allowed to be published and publicised without any hindrance whatsoever. What could have been an end-of-the-political-road situation for the political duo from Gujarat, and end-of-the-journalistic-road situation for the young investigative journalist became a win-win situation for both sides. P.S. Hope this helps some of you to connect the dots…
It is, of course, impossible to verify the authenticity of what Sanjiv Bhat had said, but Swati Chaturvedi said that she was sharing these details because she couldn’t defend ‘bad faith “journalism”‘.
She also hinted that Washington Post, for which Rana Ayyub writes, shouldn’t work with someone who published lies.
Swati Chaturvedi also went on to call Rana Ayyub a plagiariser. ” Do stop the plagiarism,” she urged.
Now one doesn’t know how to parse these charges — both Swati Chaturvedi and Rana Ayyub have regularly shared biased and fake news to further their far-left narratives. But the exchange does prove one thing — it’s not only the right that thinks that Rana Ayyub isn’t a journalist — people on her side of the aisle have the exact same views as well.
