Oh, sweet irony: Tehelka's latest issue is about rape, cover-ups

With all the brouhaha over the sexual assault case against Tehelka Editor-in-Chief , the publications first issue after the scandal was bound to draw attention. And in what can only be called an unfortunate coincidence, it carries a detailed report on allegations of rape and a cover-up against a powerful in family in Karnataka. And the irony has not been lost on anybody. Dated 30 November , the latest issue of Tehelka includes a report on a 17-year-old girl’s alleged rape and murder in Dharmasthala, Karnataka, with allegations of the involvement of a local powerful religious family. [caption id=“attachment_1255039” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Former managing editor of Tehelka[/caption] “Rape, Murder And Cover-Up In A Temple Town? The rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl comes back to haunt the famous Dharmasthala temple complex in Karnataka. Its administrators, the Heggades, are the target of a massive protest,” said the introduction to the report. A report in _The Times of Indi_a on the irony of the Tehelka report also referred to another cover story on rape that Tehelka carried soon after the Delhi gangrape of December 16 last year. “In a commentary headlined ‘Why did it need an incident so unspeakably brutal to trigger our outrage?’ Chaudhury reeled off a series of questions: “How can India change its endemically diseased mindset about women?” Incidentally, the digital / iPad version of the  November 30 issue also includes a ‘Tehelka Impact’ piece on financial support pouring in for the survivor of a gangrape.   Following a discussion on rape at the ThiNK festival (titled The Beast In Our Midst: Rape Survivors Speak Their Stories, moderated by Shoma Chaudhury), the report says, donations started “flowing in”. The discussion itself teed off  from a report in Tehelka’s August issue about caste violence against women in Haryana. " The story showed how the system was either apathetic towards the oppressed, or worse, complicit in propagating casteism," the report says.