Celebrity Television journalist Rajdeep Sardesai has been caught on Twitter multiple times peddling half-truths and whole lies. For such poor journalism and blatant hypocrisy, Sardesai is often trolled online, and sometimes unfortunately even gets abused. Abuse by anyone is wrong, although technically it may qualify as free-speech. Rajdeep is usually content in playing victim by choosing a few abusive tweets, linking them to Modi and his “Bhakts”:

The language used by @PMOIndia supporters on social media is appalling. why do supporters embarrass their leader? Who will rein them in? — Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) January 16, 2016

Rajdeep for his part is no fan of Bhakts. He made this amply clear when he hurled punches at some Modi supporters who had heckled and verbally abused him in New York in 2014. He later expressed “deep regret” for his actions and admitted he should have just walked away instead of getting physical. He claimed that “something snapped” that led him to getting physical.

It seems something has snapped again today.

For the past few days social media is rife with speculation as to who could be part of the infamous “Agusta Patrakar” gang. The gang of journalists who were flown to Italy at the behest of the Italian arms dealing company. The journalists who were allegedly paid a hefty sum to ensure that coverage on the scam is “managed”.

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In many discussions on social media, Rajdeep’s name came up, along with the names of scores of other journalists. We want to make it clear her that we are not endorsing any corridor whispers. There must be an inquiry to find out who these corrupt journalists are. The rot seems to be much bigger than we imagined after Radia tapes and recently Essar mails were leaked.

However, it seems that these corridor whispers have “snapped” something in Rajdeep’s mind again. Because the big man in his Ivory tower, who never responds to anything, began responding. He did so by sending direct messages to people in private, rather than doing it in public on his Twitter timeline. And soon after the responses, he began blocking people.

The responses were not civil or fact based rebuttals or anything of that sort. In fact, tweets that he responded to didn’t even directly accuse him of being bribed by AgustaWestland. But we got to see the hidden feelings of Rajdeep Sardesai, the erudite Editor of the India Today group, showering uncharitable remarks, bringing up “mothers” of other people:

Here are a couple of replies to users invoking their mothers:

In some cases, even borderline threats:

Although we at OpIndia.com are not big fans of Rajdeep Sardesai, we were shocked to see these tweets. We talked to a couple of those posting these screenshots to confirm that these were genuine messages, and they confirmed affirmatively. Still, to be fair to Mr. Sardesai, we decided to get his view too. We asked him on Twitter, and are awaiting his response.

This report will be updated if and when he responds to our query, either on his public timeline on Twitter or in private by sending a Direct Message to us.

UPDATE: Rajdeep didn’t respond for more than two hours after we put the question to him (at 1.11 PM today). Before our question, there were dozens, if not hundreds of questions already put to him by tagging him on Twitter, asking why was he being abusive. This went for more than 12 hours, but there was no clarification from him at all. Instead, we got one more screenshot of him being abusive.

After our article went live, many people tagged him again asking the same question. Within minutes, “Rajdeep Sardesai” was trending on Twitter. Finally at 3.19 PM today, he sent out the following public tweet, claiming that his account was hacked and those abusive messages were actually not sent by him:

So Rajdeep claims that his account was hacked and some miscreant who put out those abusive direct messages (DMs). This seems unlikely because some of the abusive DMs were sent out at near midnight on 29th April, and after that Rajdeep Sardesai has been accessing his “hacked” account and tweeting normally for more than 12 hours. He never felt any problem logging in or got any security alert from Twitter?

Furthermore, all these hours, he was asked the same question that we asked. He could have clarified back then only and the matter would have rested. In fact, one of the abused users had specifically asked if his account was hacked. He didn’t respond. He was not bothered about this hacking till we put up this report?

And why would the hacker only send a few abusive DMs and block people afterwards? If the aim was to give bad name to Rajdeep and embarrass him, would the “hacker” have not tried to send a publicly abusive tweet and embarrass Rajdeep even more?

We leave it upon our readers to conclude for themselves what they want to believe. Was it a genuine case of hacking (Mr. Sardesai should file a complaint with the Delhi Police’s cyber cell in that case) or was it a Suresh Raina’s “nephew moment” for Rajdeep Sardesai?

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