On September 12, Sukhdeep Kaur, a journalist in Chandigarh, posted on Facebook that she had been pressured to resign from Hindustan Times after Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh complained to the newspaper’s management about her adversarial reporting. When she resisted, Kaur claimed, she was handed a termination letter on September 7, four days before her contract was to be renewed. 

Speaking to Newslaundry about the events leading up to the termination of her services, Kaur, who was senior assistant editor with HT’s Chandigarh bureau, said she was summoned for a meeting on July 26 with Soumya Bhattacharya, the managing editor, and Rakesh Gautam, head of human resources. “I was called to Delhi in the last week of July and told … Amarinder Singh was complaining about my stories to the chairperson of Hindustan Times. I was told [the editors] thought I was a good reporter until they realised my work was biased,” she said. “I was called to Delhi again on August 8 and given the transfer letter. It was followed by a mail on August 12 that in the event of me not joining the national political bureau in Delhi by September 2, it would be assumed that I was no longer interested in continuing to work for the company.”

Singh’s media advisor, Raveen Thukral, denied the chief minister had ever complained to HT’s management about Kaur’s reporting.

At the centre of the row, Kaur said, were two stories. The first, headlined “The big, fat Patiala peg: Capt Amarinder, Mohindra, Sidhu top three in new Punjab cabinet” and published on March 17, 2017, was about Singh’s swearing-in ceremony. Kaur said she had provided the headline and the copy desk left it unchanged. Over two years later, at the July meeting, she claimed Bhattacharya and Rakesh Gautam, HT’s head of human resources, told her the headline was “derogatory for a solemn occasion” and “implied something else”.

The second article was not even published, in print or online, even though Kaur’s story pitch had been approved by her supervisor, resident editor of HT’s Chandigarh bureau, Ramesh Vinayak. “I had done a story on a Singapore cruise taken by Aroosa Alam, Amarinder Singh’s alleged partner, in January this year. It raised questions of propriety as she had gone on the cruise with a minister, Razia Sultana, whose husband Mohammad Mustafa was on a panel of five senior cops slated for the Punjab DGP post,” Kaur said. 

Kaur alleged that Alam was also accompanied by a minister’s wife as well as the wife of Punjab’s current vigilance chief. “The vigilance chief is handling sensitive criminal cases against Amarinder Singh, including the Ludhiana City Centre scam and Amritsar Improvement Trust scam,” she explained.

Newslaundry could not independently verify if and when the cruise was organised and who went on it. 

Kaur has been a journalist for 19 years. She started out as a copy editor with HT in 2001. She moved to The Indian Express in 2007 before returning to HT in 2013. “I have been an anti-establishment reporter and it takes courage to write against those in power,” she wrote on Facebook. “It is because of the same courage that HT sent me to cover floods and riots. It is the same courage that gives me the conviction to write now.”  

On May 23, the day the Lok Sabha election results were declared, Kaur said she filed a complaint with HT’s head office in Delhi about getting “unfavourable and biased treatment” from her resident editor. In particular, Kaur complained that she was being taken off her political beat on crucial news days, and had to put up with “unacceptable behaviour” of a senior male colleague. It was then that she was summoned for the July 26 meeting.

Kaur said the meeting was convened ostensibly to address her complaint, but she was treated as the accused rather than the complainant. “I was grilled ruthlessly for an hour on what they called ‘biased’ reporting, citing complaints of Amarinder Singh and his media adviser, Raveen Thukral,” she claimed. 

Kaur rejected the allegation of being “biased”, pointing out that she had done adversarial reporting on the previous Parkash Singh Badal government as well.

Kaur claimed that at the August meeting, she was asked to shift to the Delhi bureau. She saw it as a tactic to pressure her into resigning as it would have been inconvenient for her to move cities in the middle of her children’s school year. As she noted in her Facebook post: “I [was] asked to move to Delhi at short notice, on September 2, the day the half-yearly exams of my 13-year-old daughter began. The aim was to create circumstances that force me to quit.”

Responding to Kaur’s Facebook post, Thukaral tweeted at her: “I don’t know what transpired between you and Hindustan Times but your attempt to drag Amarinder Singh into the affair is disgusting and condemnable. Shows your total lack of professionalism and ethics, as media freedom in Punjab under Capt is exemplary.”

To Newslaundry, Thukaral denied the chief minister had ever complained about Kaur’s reporting, although his office had sent several rejoinders to stories published in HT. A rejoinder had been sent to Kaur’s “Patiala peg” story as well, he confirmed.

Thukaral was the political editor of HT (Delhi and Chandigarh) from 1989 to 2007. On Kaur’s claim that she was pressured to quit HT following Singh’s complaints, Thukaral said, “I have been a journalist for 32 years and have spent 18 years in Hindustan Times and from my personal experience, I can definitely rule out that possibility.” 

He added: “Every person has the right to send a rejoinder to a media organisation on any particular story if it is factually incorrect or carries a false narrative. I have sent several rejoinders to her stories which I thought were completely biased, but did not make any complaint against her.” 

Thukaral took issue with Kaur describing herself as an “anti-establishment reporter”, asking, “What is an anti-establishment reporter? A reporter’s job is to be objective, not anti-establishment.” 

Kaur, meanwhile, said in the wake of her social media posts, she received a call from HT’s editor-in-chief warning her that the newspaper would initiate legal proceedings against her.

Newslaundry made multiple attempts to contact Vinayak, HT’s Chandigarh resident editor, but to no avail. An employee of the newspaper refused to connect a call to Vinayak, saying he was busy in a meeting. Newslaundry also emailed Vinayak. The story will be updated if a response is received.