Aniruddha Bahal

Aniruddha Bahal (born c. 1967) is an Indian journalist, author, founder and editor of the online magazine Cobrapost.com. Born in Allahabad, Bahal worked as a journalist and editor for India Today and Outlook. In 1999, he along with Tarun Tejpal co-founded Tehelka, an investigative news website. While at Tehelka, Bahal conceived and carried out a sting operation which caught members of Indian Cricket Team accepting bribes to throw matches in camera. It resulted in a series of articles on match fixing in Indian Cricket, which were eventually published as a book - Fallen Heroes. Bahal is also known for his part in Operation West End, another sting operation. In 2003, he left Tehelka.

In 2003, Bahal wrote an espionage thriller Bunker 13, which went on to win the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

In 2005, Bahal founded and became the editor-in-chief of the online investigative journal Cobrapost.com. The same year, Bahal and Cobrapost carried out Operation Duryodhana (also known as the "Cash for Questions" scandal), in which they managed to film several members of the Indian parliament accepting cash bribes in return for asking questions in parliament. In 2008, he started hosting "The Tony B Show" for Channel V.

In the satirical Hindi film L.S.D., the character Prabhat, a young man persecuted for being involved with a tehelka-like operation, is based on Aniruddha Bahal.

On 13 March 2013 he claimed to have exposed major banks in India turning black money into white and engaging in gross violations of Income Tax Act, FEMA, by carrying out a sting operation code named Red Spider

He also unearthed misuse of social media platforms by several IT companies for a price. The Expose was revealed in 'Operation Blue Virus'

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