Journalist Nidhi Razdan says her Harvard University offer was fraudulent, calls it a phishing attack
New Delhi: Senior Journalist Nidhi Razdan on Friday said that she was a victim of “Very serious Phishing attack” adding that her Harvard University offer of teaching post was fraudulent. Razdan had, in June last year, announced that she would be quitting NDTV to take up the new job at Harvard.
“In June 2020 and after 21 years with NDTV, I decided to move on and said that I would be joining Harvard University as an Associate Professor of Journalism,” said Razdan in a statement released on Twitter. “I had been given to believe that I would be joining the University in September 2020. While I was making preparations to take up my new assignment in January 2021. Along with these delays, I began noticing a number of administrative anomalies in the process being described to me.”
The journalist said that she had, at first, dismissed the irregularities as “being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature”. After this, the journalist said she contacted the senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity.
“Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I had received from the University,” the statement said. “After hearing from the University, I have now learnt that I have been the victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack. I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism. The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts.”
Razdan further stated that she has filed police complaint in this regard. Her statement further said she had taken the issue up with authorities at Harvard calling on them to take serious note of the incident.
“In the past few days, I have written to individuals and organizations with whom I have been in touch with over the past few months to keep them informed of this shocking development,” it read. “I hope that the police are able to get to the bottom of this attack on me at the earliest and help me bring this unsavoury incident to a swift end.”
She was the host of the NDTV programme Left, Right and Centre.
In November, Razdan won the International Press Institute India award for excellence in journalism for her reporting of the Kathua rape and murder case in Jammu and Kashmir.
Razdan is the author of Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India, published in July 2017.
I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. I’m putting this statement out to set the record straight about what I’ve been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media. pic.twitter.com/bttnnlLjuh
— Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 15, 2021
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'War no solution, terrorists must be hunted down': Raj Thackeray
Mumbai (PTI): Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray said war was not a solution to the problem of terrorism, and the government should give priority to finding the perpetrators of terror attacks.
On a day Indian armed forces carried out missile strikes on terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, he said the government must be questioned about why a terror attack could take place in Pahalgam in the first place.
"War is no answer to a terrorist attack. In the US, they (terrorists) toppled the Twin Towers, attacked the Pentagon. The US did not wage a war. They killed those terrorists," said the MNS chief, speaking to reporters here.
"You have not found the terrorists who attacked (tourists in Pahalgam). Why there was no security in a place where thousands of tourists are going for the last many years? It is more important to carry out a combing operation inside our country and find them out. The airstrike, distracting people....this, war can not be the solution," he added.
Instead of Wednesday's planned mock drill of Civil Defence, a "combing operation" should be carried out all over the country, Thackeray further said.
Criticizing what he called a misplaced show of strength, Thackeray said, "There seems to be a desire to create a war-like situation in another country. Now we see mock drills and sirens (going off). But we need to ask the fundamental question, why did this (attack in Pahalgam on April 22 in which 26 civilians were killed) happen in the first place?"
He also took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his itinerary in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack. "The prime minister was in Saudi Arabia when this (terror attack) happened, and he returned early, only to go to Bihar for campaigning. That was not necessary. He went to Kerala for the inauguration of Adani's port and later came to Mumbai for the WAVES function. If the situation was so grave, all this could have been avoided," said the MNS chief who had backed Modi during the 2024 general elections.
The government's failures need to be pointed out, Thackeray said, adding the country does not need a symbolic response. "Find the terrorists, dismantle their networks, and tackle the drug menace that is spreading through our streets," he said.
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