By Radheshyam Rai
Upendra Rai is now out on bail. He had a tough time in last one year only to fight back a long and nerve wrecking battle against a powerful lobby. He faced a series of allegations against him. He was declared benami petitioner, power broker, fraud, and cheater by an organised lot of hostile muggers. He fearlessly faced the allegation like obtaining an aerodrome entry pass fraudulently and conniving with public servants for financial gains. But as we know, ‘every lie has an expiry date but the truth never expires,’Upendra is getting clean chits in these accusations.
CBI gave clean chit to Upendra Rai by filling a reply dated 18 March, 2019 in RC 217 2018 A 003 to special court CBI. CBI strongly took stand in court that they did not find any wrongful pecuniary gain in terms of money by Upendra Rai. So the question of money laundering does not arise. While Delhi High Court also gave the observation that every single transaction made by Upendra Rai has been done with all due diligence and there was no breach of tax compliance as every single rupee was declared in his ITRs. Therefore it is pertinent to say no suspicious transaction ever took place.
Being an investigative journalist Upendra made his identity as a muckraker. Thus he made lots of friends and foes throughout his career. Coming from a humble family background it was not an easy task for him to become a business journalist. To understand the nuances of business world he studied the business management from a reputed institute and got his degree first. Working with Star News (renamed ABP News) he worked tirelessly and unearthed huge scandals. Lots of bigwigs got exposed in his investigative stories. Needless to say he made a whole lot of enemies who were hell-bent to teach him a lesson. Working with star news he exposed the Dmat account scandal in October 2005. It was this story which put government machinery in to action redrafting financial rules. Viewers were awestruck watching his story on stud farm owner Hasan Ali in January 2007, which resulted in Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax raid on Ali.
Upendra Rai is known for his vast network of information. It is this close network through which he used to get exclusive information of Bollywood also. When entire media was speculating about Abhishek Bachchan-Aishwarya Rai marriage, Upendra not only broke this news but filed the detailed story with exact date and place of marriage. It was this hard work and dedication which earned him laurels and awards. Apart from Star news achiever award he got Indian Television Academy Awards for best reporting among Hindi news channels.
