A day after a reporter from Mangalam TV— a newly-launched Malayalam news channel— called it quits after claiming that the channel indulged in “unethical” journalistic practices, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ajith Kumar went on air to clarify the claims made by the reporter Al-Neema Ashraf. On Thursday night, Kumar issued an unconditional apology on behalf of the channel. He said that the exposé had aired on March 26, which led to the resignation on Kerala’s Transport Minister AK Saseendran, was indeed fake. He revealed that the expose was a sting operation conducted by a journalist from their team, ostensibly hinting that it was Ashraf.

“We assure that the mistake would not be repeated in future. We will make sure that our editorial team takes appropriate measure to avoid this,” Kumar said in a bulletin last night.

On March 26, the channel aired an exclusive revealing a lewd conversation, as part of its launch bulletin, between Saseendran and a woman. Though Saseendran denied the allegations, he had resigned hours after the report.  

Earlier, the channel had claimed that the audio clip was recovered from a woman, who wanted to expose the harassment from the minister. Kumar had refused to identify the woman before he revealed that it was indeed a honey trap. “We received the tape from a woman. We verified the voice of the Minister and aired it. I am against the idea of targeting any person for a news report and I will cooperate with the judicial probe,” Kumar had said.

On Wednesday, Ashraf had revealed in a Facebook post that the channel had a list of five soft targets who could be easily trapped. “In one of our meetings, they gave us a list of officials to target. We were told that the names were potential targets who were vulnerable to getting trapped,” she had claimed. 

While Saseendran has welcomed the channel’s move, the Nationalist Congress Party now want him to return to his ministerial position.