Republic TV Journalist Shweta Kothari Resigns After Being Branded As Shashi Tharoor's 'Spy', Alleges Humiliation

Responding to her statement, Tharoor tweeted: “Congratulations on standing up for your own integrity: I don't employ spies, but i do respect serious journalists.”

Outlook Web Bureau

Updated on: 13 October 2017 8:17 pm

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Republic TV Journalist Shweta Kothari Resigns After Being Branded As Shashi Tharoor's 'Spy', Alleges Humiliation

A senior correspondent in the Republic TV has resigned from the organisation after being allegedly humiliated by her seniors, saying editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami suspected her of being a "mole" planted by Congress MP "Shashi Tharoor" in the channel.

Posting a statement on Twitter on Friday, Shweta Kothari alleged that she faced constant humiliation during her stint with the newly launched news channel, and her reporting manager even “spent time going through my social network profiles" and alleged her of being a "spy" and informed this to Goswami as well.

Kothari alleged that Goswami suspected her of being a mole because Tharoor follows her on Twitter.

“On a eventful evening on 30th August 2017, my reporting manager (an editor who I would not like to name) came up to me and said that Arnab Goswami suspects me of being a mole planted by Shashi Tharoor in the organisation, the reason being, Mr Tharoor follows me on Twitter,” Kothari wrote.

In the statement Kothari clarified that “I have never met/contacted/known Mr Tharoor in any capacity.”

“It was only in late September when I finally raised it up with Arnab. I narrated the ordeal to him and the fact it has taken a hit on my morale. There was no concrete response. To set the record straight, I have never met/contacted/known Mr Tharoor in any capacity. Nobody bothered to clarify. I was left in the lurch. My loyalty questioned, my vanity hurt,” she wrote.

She said the same editor had once accused her of flirting with a police officer after she conducted a sting operation involving a cop in Delhi. She even threatened Kothari to make her conversation with the officer public and “destroy my career.”

Here’s the full statement:

Statement- Why I resigned from Republic TV. pic.twitter.com/woTClAVICT
— Shweta Kothari (@Shwkothari) October 13, 2017

Responding to her statement, Tharoor tweeted: “Congratulations on standing up for your own integrity: I don't employ spies, but i do respect serious journalists.”

Congratulations on standing up for your own integrity: https://t.co/QaNyocjFT7
I don't employ spies, but i do respect serious journalists. https://t.co/VtlaqsXMpk
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 13, 2017

Tharoor had filed a defamation case against the news anchor on May 26 after Republic TV had aired what it called an exposé connected to Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar’s case. Goswami’s new venture had broadcast what it claimed were audio tapes between one of the channel’s reporters and one of Tharoor’s aides. Republic TV had claimed that the tapes proved that Pushkar’s body had been moved from one room to another at the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014, the night she had died.

Kothari is not the first employee of the news channel to criticise it and its editor-in-chief.

Earlier in September, Sumana Nandy, had criticised the news channel for its coverage of Gauri Lankesh's murder case.

Through a Facebook post, Nandy, had said that she was ashamed the way Republic TVwas openly "batting for a rogue government."

"A journalist is murdered in cold blood days after receiving death threats from the BJP-RSS cadres. And instead of questioning these murderers, you question the Opposition? Where is the integrity (sic)?" Nandy had asked.