One of the contemporary lamentations — including from legacy media houses themselves — is that big business has devoured television news channels. Titled “Newsrooms that Swallow Whales,” this visual-and-verbal commentary examines a single news event to explore how sections of the legacy print media, too, have mastered the art of swallowing — or burying — news that proves inconvenient for powerful players.
What follows is excerpted from the second Bhasurendrababu Memorial Lecture, organised by True Dialogue Debates and delivered by former journalist R. Rajagopal in Alappuzha, south Kerala, on February 15. The commemoration of Bhasurendrababu — journalist and political commentator — was inaugurated by Vijoo Krishnan, General Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha and CPI(M) Politburo member. This is not a full reproduction of the lecture, but an account drawn from it.
The purported legal documents and official letters featured here were sourced from CourtListener, part of the Free Law Project, a federally recognized non-profit organisation in the United States. CourtListener.com is a fully searchable and accessible archive of court data, including growing repositories of opinions, oral arguments, judicial financial records, and federal filings. Founded in 2010, Free Law Project uses technology, data, and advocacy to make the legal ecosystem more equitable and competitive.
On January 21 last month, at 3:28 p.m. EST — around 2 a.m. in India on January 22 — a series of documents appeared on CourtListener.com.
As many as 20 PDF files were uploaded. The files were attributed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American securities markets watchdog. To the best of available knowledge, neither the SEC — to which these documents are attributed — nor the Government of India, whose purported letters form part of the documents, has publicly contested their authenticity. These documents have remained in the public domain since January 21, 2026 (EST). Although the contents of the files are not legible on the presentation screen, the purpose here is not to dissect their details but to note that multiple documents entered the public domain on that day.
The issue relates to what is known in the United States as “service methods,” referred to in India as serving summons or notice to parties involved in a case. In this instance, the SEC sought to issue documents to Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani. The documents are linked to a civil case in which the SEC has levelled charges against Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Green’s board of directors, and his nephew Sagar Adani, executive director of the same board. The Adanis have consistently denied all charges.
The SEC filed a motion requesting a New York court to set a date permitting alternative service of summonses to the defendants. Indian nationals cannot be directly served summonses by foreign agencies like the SEC; however, defendants may waive service if they choose. The SEC stated it had approached Gautam Adani’s counsel. Yet in April 2025, it noted that “neither defendant has agreed to waive service of the summons and complaint.” In the absence of such a waiver, foreign agencies in civil matters must route service through India’s Ministry of Law and Justice under the Hague Service Convention. This made the role of the Indian law ministry crucial.
A preliminary statement in the documents notes that while the SEC had filed charges, India’s Ministry of Law and Justice had twice refused service under the Hague Convention. Reports had earlier indicated that the Indian government was dragging its feet. What remained unknown until January 21 were the reasons cited by the ministry — and that the matter had effectively reached a dead end.
Among the 20 uploaded PDFs was a letter purportedly sent by the Indian law ministry to the SEC. For newsrooms accustomed to covering “sealed-cover” submissions by the Narendra Modi government, this letter could well have been manna from heaven. All that newspapers needed to do was seek confirmation from the law ministry regarding authenticity and, in the event of silence, publish the document while noting that the ministry had neither confirmed nor denied it.
The purported letter stated that the SEC’s forwarding letter “bears no seal and signature and the model form bears no seal of the requesting authority.” On this basis, the Indian ministry returned the documents to the SEC.
The SEC responded, writing to the Indian ministry that the Hague Convention does not mandate a seal or signature on the forwarding cover letter. It maintained that its requests complied with the Convention. The Hague Service Convention, the SEC argued, does not require a seal or signature on the forwarding cover letter, nor does the Model Form require a seal. The watchdog resent the request.
The SEC further cited The Practical Handbook on the Operation of the Service Convention, stating that demanding a seal and stamp is erroneous and that certification is not required on the Model Form or accompanying documents.
According to the SEC, the Convention only requires the Model Form to be signed by a competent individual. Its requests met these criteria, and the optional cover letter, it argued, should not have been grounds for return.
The SEC’s cover letter was displayed — its second page unsigned — one of the reasons cited by the Indian ministry for returning the request. The SEC countered that the cover letter itself is optional and requires neither seal nor signature.
An image of the purported Hague Convention Model Form showed it signed but without a seal. The absence of a seal had been cited by the Indian ministry. Yet the form itself states “Signature and/or stamp,” a phrase the SEC relied upon in its rebuttal.
On September 12, 2025, the SEC followed up on the requests for service originally sent in February and resent in May.
In November 2025, the Indian ministry responded again, citing SEC procedures and stating that the summonses were not covered under specific categories. The requests were once more returned.
That letter appears to have been the final straw. The SEC then moved a New York court. The uploaded documents show no fresh SEC response to the Indian ministry thereafter. However, the SEC’s court filing states that the ministry’s objection to its authority to invoke the Hague Convention lacked basis.
The SEC’s move triggered rapid developments. On January 23 — just two days after the SEC approached the court — Gautam Adani’s counsel wrote to the court stating that discussions were ongoing with the SEC and requested that the court’s order be deferred.
The court agreed to defer its ruling until January 30, 2026.
Subsequently, the SEC informed the court that counsel for the Adanis had agreed to service of process, eliminating the need for the court to rule on the motion. The defendants, however, retained all litigation rights, including those concerning jurisdiction.
What was resolved in just over a week had, in fact, taken 429 days of back-and-forth since the filing of the original case. Not all delays can be attributed to the Indian ministry. During this period, Donald Trump became the 47th President of the United States, leading to some administrative flux and related pauses. Nonetheless, the sheer number of days required for what is typically a procedural step is illustrative.
Numbers, however, do not tell stories on their own.
In June, a pregnant woman named Sunali Khatun was swept up in Delhi’s drive against alleged illegal immigrants. She was “pushed back” to Bangladesh in “hot haste” within five days — even though the Union home ministry states that verification can take up to 30 days. Following intervention by the Supreme Court, Sunali returned to India on humanitarian grounds.
One process involving a tycoon consumed 429 days.
Another, involving the deportation of a pregnant woman, took only five.
The question remains: when the documents attributed to the SEC entered the public domain, what did India’s paper tigers do?
You’re right. That version became too report-like and lost the sharpness and tone of the original slides. Let me rewrite it properly — as a strong, flowing narrative that keeps everything you said, but with better rhythm, coherence and punch.
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The Silence of the Newsrooms
Let us return to the afternoon of January 21, 2026, in New York. That was when the SEC documents relating to the service of summons on Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani quietly dropped onto the internet. In New Delhi, it was around 2 a.m. on January 22. Too late for most newspapers to carry the development in their January 22 print editions.
So let us grant them that grace. Let us wait for the morning of January 23 — more than 24 hours after the SEC-linked documents had entered the public domain.
Good morning, upcountry India.
The Indian Express arrives. Page 1 is scanned carefully. No SEC-Adani service request story in sight. Perhaps the large advertisement at the bottom elbowed it out. Fine. Let us turn to the business section.
The Economy page does carry an Adani story — tiny, tucked near the bottom. But it is not the SEC development. It is a Press Trust of India report about Adani Energy’s dipping profit. The SEC story remains elusive.
By January 24 — over 50 hours after the documents surfaced — the story finally makes its way to the front page of The Indian Express. Or perhaps it forces its way in, propelled not by editorial urgency but by market tremors. The headline reads: “Adani stocks fall as US SEC plans email summons to Gautam Adani.” Investor jitters appear to have mattered more than the reader’s right to know that the SEC had moved a New York court after 429 days of procedural resistance.
The Times of India — whose parent company’s media school trained me in 1990–91 — never ceases to surprise. The story is on Page 1. Yes, it is a brief. But it is there. The brief points to Page 27.
And so begins a small expedition through the paper. After negotiating the rapids of newsprint, Page 27 appears.
There it is — a larger SEC-Adani story sailing in the Times Business section. Three columns. Five paragraphs. Placed above the “anchor” story. Yet, despite its vast in-house reporting network, The Times has opted for a Reuters report. What kept its reporters so preoccupied that none could be spared for this development? The rest of the page offers no clue.
Next, The Hindu. Usually dependable. Surely this would find space on Page 1. It does not. The colourful NDA advertisement dominates attention. Turning to the business page, the SEC story does appear — a narrow report in the second deck. Once again, Reuters. Once again, a paper with a formidable reporting network relying on a wire copy.
The Telegraph — a paper I once edited — does not carry the story on Page 1 either. On the Business page, the Reuters report sits as a single-column item.
The New Indian Express? I cannot find the story on either the front page or the business page. I deliberately say “I could not find the story,” because newspapers today scatter tiny items across labyrinthine layouts. It is possible the SEC story is camouflaged somewhere. But must readers play Indiana Jones to locate consequential news? Or should newspapers present important developments in ways that are visible and accessible?
Now to my home turf.
I cannot find the SEC story in Malayala Manorama. Malayalam newspapers, these days, seem absorbed in the gold theft at the Sabarimala temple.
Mathrubhumi, too — the story eludes me. On January 23, I also fail to spot the SEC-Adani development on the front pages of the two Left newspapers, Deshabhimani and Janayugam.
Across both print editions and paywalled online editions, the SEC-Adani story does not appear — at least not in any visible form — in The Indian Express, The New Indian Express, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhumi on January 23. The Telegraph, whose e-paper is free, and some others do carry it in one form or another.
As a subscriber to the four newspapers mentioned, I wrote to their editors on the night of January 23, using the email addresses published in their pages, asking why the story had not been reported that day. There has been no acknowledgement since. I cannot even be certain that my emails reached them.
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Who Swam Against the Tide — and What the Newsrooms Chose to Chase
Let us ask the obvious question: who swam against the tide?
We return once more to the afternoon of January 21 in New York — and 2 a.m. on January 22 in India — when the SEC-Adani story broke.
Not all journalists were asleep.
At 4:28 a.m. on January 22 — less than three hours after the SEC documents entered the public domain — a journalist in India had already filed a report.
Devirupa Mitra published a detailed and comprehensive story for the news portal The Wire at 4:28 a.m., proving that where there is the will, there is always a story. It is worth noting that The Wire does not charge its readers; it relies solely on donations.
Now, about the print editions.
The news that day, in my view, was not about the Adanis. The Adanis — who have denied the charges — were part of a legal process that would unfold in court. It is an ongoing matter. Only a court of law can determine innocence or guilt, and until then, the Adanis are entitled to every protection the law affords.
The Wire struck the nail squarely on the head. Its headline placed emphasis where it belonged — highlighting that the Modi government had blocked the SEC request for several months.
That, I believe, was the real story.
The central issue was how the Union government appeared to have responded to attempts to serve summons on defendants facing charges in a country that India publicly celebrates as a friend. The purported documents — uploaded and attributed to the SEC — suggest that the American watchdog contested the Indian law ministry’s objections, citing material under the Hague Convention. What remains unclear, however, is whether the Indian government subsequently challenged the SEC’s version.
Indian citizens have the right to know whether their government misled a regulatory watchdog; whether it stonewalled a legal process with implications for investors; or whether, conversely, the US watchdog’s claims are inaccurate — in which case the Indian government ought not to take that lying down.
Once again, the story was not about the Adanis. It was about the stand adopted by the Indian government.
Yet no newspaper I examined appeared to foreground that aspect. Rarely are Indian newspapers handed, on a platter, a stack of legal documents already in the public domain. Yet in this instance, most chose either to ignore the development for over 51 hours or to underplay it.
I had assumed that at least some newspapers would use the documents — after erecting the necessary journalistic guardrails.
I had assumed that some would frame the story along the lines indicated here: using documents whose authorship had not been contested until February 14, and pressing the issue of the purported position adopted by the Indian government.
But several newsrooms seem to have perfected the art of swallowing inconvenient news when it concerns powerful players. The inevitable result: readers are denied important information.
And then — bouncing back from these depths of professional despair — I discovered renewed hope.
On February 6, Mathrubhumi carried a Page 1 story that restored my faith in the data-gathering zeal of Indian print newsrooms. The newspaper reported, in meticulous detail, how National Security Adviser Ajit Doval went shopping — unannounced — and purchased banana chips. Yes. B-A-N-A-N-A C-H-I-P-S. Banana chips. In Thiruvananthapuram.
The operation, it seems, was blown open when some employees of a space agency recognised Doval and introduced themselves. Hold your breath: he reportedly exchanged pleasantries with them in Hindi and English.
Pulse racing and adrenaline pumping, I read the chips story with the thrill of watching a Mission: Impossible sequence. Mathrubhumi displayed remarkable courage in revealing what could only be described as state secrets — such as the presence of four vehicles and an ambulance stationed outside while Doval selected his banana chip supplies. The report even disclosed how much money he spent on the purchase.
Indian print newsrooms, clearly, are in safe hands — locked and loaded for the mission.
Step aside, without reservation, Ethan Hunt.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to retire.
Thank you.
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R Rajagopal, Senior Journalist, Former Editor The Telegraph