Former NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan has shared a long statement on the NDTV website regarding her ‘ordeal’ when she thought she has been hired as a professor at Harvard to teach journalism. On December 16, New York Times had shared a long ‘investigative’ article detailing how she fell for the elaborate scam and went around for a year believing that she is a Harvard professor.
In her blog post for NDTV, Nidhi has written that she was in constant contact with the so-called fraudsters for almost a year over emails and letters. She had even signed contracts and the fraudsters had sent documents to her employers with links for references. Earlier she had stated that she had even had a 90-minute long ‘interview’ with the people who claimed to be from Harvard.
She has thanked the New York Times for reaching out to her and engaging a team of journalists, along with experts from Stanford University and the Univerisity of Toronto to find how she was scammed and by whom. She has mentioned that Jiten Jain, a cybersecurity expert was also engaged to look into her laptop and other devices.
Notably, all these experts got together to ‘investigate’ how Nidhi was scammed and after one year, they concluded that they have no idea how she was scammed, and exactly by whom. All they could say was that Nidhi was not the only one targeted. Several other women, including BJP leader Nighat Abbas were targeted by the same group of people too. However, sadly, Nidhi was the only one who actually fell for it and quit her job.
Nidhi blames Harvard
In the blog, Nidhi has stated that Harvard University has refused to give a comment to the NYT on its investigation. Adding that Harvard had not done anything even after BJP leader Nighat Abbas sent emails and all details of how some people are impersonating the University and contacting people on their behalf, Nidhi criticised the University for not doing enough to prevent fraud being committed in their name.
She also stated that even though she had tagged the University in her tweets where she had said she is quitting NDTV to join the prestigious university as a professor of journalism, the University had not reacted.
The NYT article had mentioned that security expert Jiten Jain, who did a forensic analysis of the laptop and devices of Nidhi Razdan, said that a suspicious file he uncovered on Ms Razdan’s computer contained an IP address that had once been linked to a hacking group believed to be associated with Pakistani intelligence.
