were introduced to the then Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) President Bangaru Laxman who accepted as a "small new year's gift". Laxman recommended they meet Brajesh Mishra, who was the National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The operation took seven and a half months with Tejpal later saying that the total amount they paid in bribes was . The deals were in expensive hotels and few officials asked for branded whisky. In this whole operation, they recorded around 100 hours of video footage. Six months after Tehelka had made public its investigations, The Indian Express acquired and published transcripts of the video tapes. It showed that as part of the investigations, the reporters hired prostitutes to serve the officials. This raised ethical questions about the methods used. Tejpal later issued a statement denying that any of its women staff were provided as prostitutes. Politicians of the ruling parties called for the journalist's arrests for supplying prostitutes and questioned their ethics. Tejpal called that part of the investigation as a "needed transgression". The public and majority of their competitors supported them; The Times of India concluded that the issue of ethics "pales before the sleaze their team has dug up", The Hindu called it a "turning point in Indian journalism" but The Indian Express criticised the methods used by the Tehelka team. Tejpal received death threats and was given police protection. His reporters said that their "extraordinary methods" were for the larger public and national interest. V S Naipal held a news conference and met the then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani. Naipal told the media, "This thing that has happened to Tehelka has been profoundly disappointing to me, It comes from another era. It serves no purpose. It seems to me it will profoundly damage the country." In 2004, the CBI registered cases against Jaitley, Laxman and others in the army and the Ministry of Defence. In 2012, Laxman was sentenced to four years in jail by additional sessions Judge Kanwal Jeet Arora for this case. Author and journalist Madhu Trehan wrote a non-fiction book in 2009 on this incident, called Tehelka as Metaphor. "The Truth: Gujarat 2002" (2007) In 2007, Tehelka released footage filmed over six months relating to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. According to Uday Mahurkar writing in the India Today, it showed "VHP activists, actual perpetrators of the crimes as well as