The woman who accused former Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal of sexually assaulting her in 2013 has reportedly taken to Substack to share a deeply personal account of the ordeal she has endured over the past 13 years. In a lengthy essay, she revisited her childhood, the assault, the subsequent trial and the manner in which her identity, relationships, choices and conduct were repeatedly scrutinised during the legal battle.
Her account comes days after the Bombay High Court overturned Tejpal’s acquittal by the Goa sessions court, convicted him of rape and sentenced him to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment. The High Court also criticised the trial court for relying on stereotypical notions of how a survivor of sexual assault should behave.
‘My first lessons in politics were in male rage’
In her essay, the survivor reflected on how her childhood shaped her relationship with male anger.
She recalled that her father, a journalist, would discuss politics at home and quiz her about ministers, political parties and Parliament. Yet, despite growing up around political conversations, she said her “first lessons in politics were not from Parliament.”
“They were in male rage,” she wrote.
She described her father as a man who drank heavily and became violent, beating her mother and destroying things around the house before eventually falling asleep. The following morning, she added, he would return to being affectionate and remorseful.
The experience taught her to anticipate male anger and to modify her own behaviour accordingly.
A childhood of learning to appease angry men
The victim recounted being sexually abused as a five-year-old by a teenage boy who had been left to look after her following her parents’ divorce. She said the abuse was discovered by her grandparents, following which her male relatives beat the boy before sending him away.
Yet even then, she said, the violence did not make her feel vindicated.
Instead, she became frightened by the rage she witnessed in the men around her.
As she grew older, she encountered similar aggression outside her home, from men on Delhi’s streets and public transport to strangers and acquaintances who harassed, stalked or threatened women.
Those experiences, she explained, taught her to assess the mood of men around her constantly.
“I learned to read the room, to keep smiling when I wanted to cry,” she writes, describing how she became adept at soothing angry men.
The lesson would eventually shape how she responded to the events that followed years later.
‘I turned myself into an obedient and terrified woman’
The survivor said growing up around violence turned her into someone who tried to avoid confrontation at almost any cost.
While her professional life allowed her to express anger through journalism and political writing, she said her personal life was governed by an entirely different instinct.
“In my personal relationships, I stayed small,” she wrote.
She described herself as pleasing, light and non-threatening, someone who continued to prioritise the emotions of men and suppress her own.
For years, she said, this psychological split appeared to work.
Until the night of the assault.
The night that changed her understanding of politics
At 27, she was sexually assaulted by a man nearly twice her age, a senior figure who was responsible for her livelihood and someone her family knew and trusted.
She said that, in that moment, she was not thinking about politics or ideology. She was thinking about preventing the man from becoming angry with her.
That response, she argued, was the product of years spent learning that male anger could have devastating consequences.
Only later did she understand that the issues she had studied and written about, gender, class, sexuality, power and hierarchy, were present in the room that night.
“Politics lives in the body,” she wrote.
The trial became another battle over her body
The survivor’s account then turns to the 13-year legal battle that followed.
She said the trial repeatedly forced her to defend not simply her allegation, but her entire identity.
Her relationships, photographs, text messages, clothes, financial circumstances and professional conduct were scrutinised. She was questioned about why she did not cry, why she froze, why she continued working after the alleged assault and why she later left her workplace.
Her cross-examination, she said, ran to more than 1,000 pages.
The result was a series of competing labels imposed upon her: “good victim” or “bad”, survivor or liar, journalist or activist, reliable or unreliable.
The Bombay High Court’s recent judgment has brought renewed attention to precisely this question of how survivors are assessed in court.
Bombay HC rejects the ‘ideal victim’ framework.
In overturning Tejpal’s acquittal, the Bombay High Court criticised the Goa trial court’s reasoning and rejected stereotypical assumptions about how a survivor of sexual assault should behave.
The High Court’s ruling comes after years in which the complainant’s conduct following the alleged assault became a major part of the legal and public debate surrounding the case.
The survivor’s Substack essay offered a personal explanation for why such scrutiny can be deeply damaging.
She argued that power does not operate only through institutions such as Parliament, courts or governments. It also operates through bodies, determining whose body receives dignity, privacy and protection, and whose body is subjected to scrutiny and judgment.
‘Victim. Liar. Journalist. Activist.’
The survivor listed the contradictory identities that have been imposed upon her during the thirteen-year ordeal.
“Victim. Liar. Journalist. Activist. Liberal. Promiscuous. Survivor. Reliable. Strong. Broken. Political plant. Bubblegum feminist.”
The list captured the central argument of her essay: that a survivor is often forced into simplistic categories that leave little room for the contradictions and complexities of an actual human being.
Her Substack account is therefore not merely a retelling of the events of 2013. It is an account of what followed, thirteen years in which she said her credibility, politics, relationships, personality and even her response to trauma were repeatedly placed under the microscope.
After more than a decade of litigation, the survivor has now chosen to tell that story in her own words, not from the witness box, but on an online forum.
