Sex twist to Indian arms scandal

Support for Vajpayee's coalition slumped after the arms scandal

NEW DELHI, India -- The Indian news website whose exposure of bribery rocked the government has said it also filmed army officers demanding sex with prostitutes.

It is the latest twist to a scandal over secretly shot videotapes which, when it first emerged in March, forced the defense minister and two ruling coalition party chiefs to resign.

The revelation provoked an immediate furore in parliament, where opposition members chanted slogans and waved copies of The Indian Express newspaper -- which broke the sex story -- forcing an adjournment for the day.

Members of parliament from the ruling coalition criticized the website, www.tehelka.com, for trying to use sex to nail army officers and demanded the arrest of its editor-in-chief, Tarun Tejpal.

Tejpal said politicians were trying to shift the focus away from the investigation into corrupt defense deals by turning on the website.

"It's the oldest gimmick in the book -- discredit the messenger so that the message gets muddied and lost," he told a news conference.

He said the purpose of the sting operation was to expose corruption in government, not anyone's private affairs.

Earlier, George Fernandes, who quit as defense minister over the scandal, told Press Trust of India that his party believed the government should prosecute the website under the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act.

"The army has been demoralized, and to an extent, even the country," he told the news agency.

'Booze, money and women'

In March, the website released hours of video showing a string of politicians, military officials and bureaucrats apparently taking money from journalists posing as arms dealers to swing what was actually a fictional deal.

Many hours of footage were never released, but copies of everything the website's journalists filmed with their hidden camera were handed over to a commission of inquiry and the army.

Tejpal said the unscreened footage did indeed show military brass asking for sexual favors and even one officer having sex with a prostitute.

He said his investigative journalists had to go along with their demands to avoid blowing their cover at the early stage of a sting operation that took several months to put together.

"The idea was to keep the story going. Obviously they were making the kind of demands they obviously make over these arms dealings all the time, routine demands -- which is the booze, money, women -- the totally routine things they do."

Sex scene kept back

The maverick news website, whose Hindi name means "sensation," carried out a sting on cricket match-fixing last year that shook India's favorite game to its foundations.

But its major scoop came with the arms scandal, which sucked Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's coalition government into its biggest crisis since it took power 22 months ago.

Tejpal said Tehelka had decided against releasing the sex footage, but never wanted to suppress it.

"It is a corruption and governance story. There is no way we were going to derail the focus," he said.

The Indian Express said it had obtained copies of transcripts from the tapes.

It said in one scene, shot at a five-star hotel in New Delhi, one of the Tehelka journalists leaves in search of condoms for an army officer.

"Later in this meeting, the Tehelka representative walks out of the room leaving the camera running. One of the officers walks out of the frame with one of the prostitutes, while the second is recorded having sex with the second prostitute," it said.

Reuters contributed to this report.