dna’s response to Rajya Sabha Television CEO Gurdeep Singh Sappal

In a rejoinder to dna, Rajya Sabha Television (RSTV) CEO Gurdeep Singh Sappal clarifies that his name was wrongly spelt. I deeply regret for the typo in my edit-page article titled Diarygate: What we need to know, dated September 15, 2014. It is 'Gurdeep’ Singh Sappal and not ‘Gurmeet’ Singh Sappal as mentioned in the article. I, thereby, stand corrected.

Mr Sappal also makes three other clarifications. One, he did not directly speak to me. Second, he never told that he went to meet the CBI director Ranjit Sinha as a 'reporter’. He is the CEO and Executive Editor of RSTV and he does meet people in this capacity. Third, he says that he had communicated to my colleague and special correspondent Rohinee Singh through email that RSTV has aired over a dozen special reports and debates relating to CBI and Intelligence Agencies, all of which are available on the YouTube channel of RSTV.

It is true that Mr Sappal never spoke to me, nor have I ever claimed so! He had spoken to Singh, who is part of the dna team investigating and dissecting details pertaining to a 100-odd people, all of them frequent visitors to the CBI director’s house. Their names prominently figure in 2 Janpath-diary. In short, Mr Sappal did speak to dna. 

Ironically, Mr Sappal executes three different official roles on government payroll! He is neither an IAS nor an Indian Information Service officer. In fact, he has not come through any competitive exam, as normally is the case with government officials at joint secretary level.

Yet Mr Sappal is a joint secretary level officer plus officer on special duty (OSD) to Rajya Sabha chairman as well as to the country’s vice president Hamid Ansari. He is also the CEO of RSTV. The honourable Rajya Sabha chairman had appointed him, using his discretionary powers. Against this backdrop, it was important to find in what capacity Mr Sappal had been visiting the CBI director’s house.

Thus Singh called up Mr Sappal. And Mr Sappal told her over the phone: “I went to Mr Sinha as reporter and this is evident from the fact that RSTV carried several reports on the CBI, as available on YouTube.’’ He then sent a mail to Singh, giving details of these reports. She swears by the quote given by Mr Sappal.

While Singh is carrying on her investigations, I just borrowed this quote for an argument in my article. I also read Mr Sappal’s email and found that they are actually not 'reports’. They were 'debates’ and Mr Sappal himself had participated in one of them.

Nevertheless, Mr Sappal is OSD, joint secretary, CEO and executive editor too! Thanks for enlightening me! But Mr Sappal, as editor or reporter, must have intended to seek information for reports/debates to be telecast on RSTV. The log book register shows that Mr Sappal’s meeting with the CBI director used to last only 10-15 minutes.

Mr Sappal went to the CBI director’s house at least 25 times during the past 15 months. RSTV did not telecast reports/debates every time that Mr Sappal met the CBI director. It is a matter of fact that the CBI had recently raided an organisation, which supplied equipment to RSTV.

My argument, however, is that there are many government officials, including Mr Sappal, who frequently visited the CBI director’s house and this needs to be further probed by the government or the media.

The author is associate editor, dna