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My Bhagyakul room desk in Shillong during my late mother's visit in 1998. On top of the left Sonodyne Uranus bass-reflex speaker sits the heavy brass globe Best Correspondent Trophy
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It was the winter of 1993, and the newsroom back in Guwahati was desperate for proof. The local media football tournament was underway, but rumours were swirling that a prominent rival newspaper group was cheating. They hadn’t fielded journalists at all. Instead, they had secretly hired professional players working inside various state government departments to sweep the tournament.
As the Shillong Bureau Chief for The North East Observer, I was handed the assignment to cross-check the facts. I was quite young during those days, still in my early 20s, and running our nice bureau office located at Lower Lachumiere. Becoming the sole representative for the newspaper in Shillong suddenly handed me an immense amount of local importance. Unlike my previous tenures, I now held formal invitations and direct connections with major regional entities: the Governor’s House, senior government departments, the telecom circle, the postal department, armed forces, and local Members of Parliament. Having my name formally listed in the state DIPR directory and the police media directory was simply great, and it was envied by many in the local press circuit at the time.
My systematic approach to separating factual truth from rumours on local news beat was deeply shaped by working alongside the veteran minds of that era. Among them was the eminent writer
Gean Willington Lyngdoh (
Bah-Gean), whose precision and laborious pre-internet archive research in the early 1990s set the standard for regional reporting, an ethos I later honoured in 2011 in my
2011 obituary for Bah-Gean.
During these rounds, my official Government of India Press Bearing Authority Card under the Ministry of Communications proved to be a hundred times greater than any press card issued by a newspaper. The national emblem on it carried an almost comical amount of weight. Whenever I needed to bypass gatekeepers, evade strict security checks, or secure immediate interviews with top government officers and ministers, I would confidently flash that card. Sometimes, if the area was remote or highly bureaucratic, I would casually tell security I was from the "Telecommunication Department" rather than a local news beat. It was highly realistic, completely effective, and a lot of fun.
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The official Press Bearing Authority Card issued by the Ministry of Communications, Government of India, in March 1995, which bypassed high-level security checkpoints
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But this specific technical investigation happened at my residence. I loved electronics, and I had a slim, red Aiwa two-in-one stereo radio cassette recorder. To catch the fraud, I needed a physical audio recording. In those days, standard phone-recording gear wasn't available to consumers. I had to improvise a custom interface loop right at my desk.
I peeled back the main incoming telephone drop wire entering my room. I took a parallel connection from the copper core, but because a landline telephone line carries a very high AC voltage when it rings, damp hands can easily receive a significant electric shock. One had to be incredibly careful when putting the jack plug on the recorder to ensure no incoming calls hit the line at that exact moment. To protect my equipment and attenuate the line current, I connected a 10-ohm resistor in series with the copper line before soldering it cleanly to a standard 3.5mm jack plug. I plugged that jack straight into the microphone port of my red Aiwa player, dropped in a blank cassette, and hit the record button.
I dialled the manager of the rival newspaper group and began reading out the specific names of the footballers on the pitch, asking if they were employed in his organisation. He answered immediately, confirming that none of them were his colleagues or worked for their publication. As I kept asking more follow-up questions on the same call, he continued to state clearly that none of the names I mentioned were employed there.
Towards the very end of the call, someone in his room must have realised what was happening and prompted him. Suddenly, his tone shifted, he said, "Yes, they were all employed in our newspaper," and ended the call abruptly. But it was too late, the real, undeniable proof was already out and captured on my tape.
That night, I called my senior desk editor in Guwahati. I patched the audio output of my Aiwa player directly back into the telephone line handset loop. The entire newsroom listened to the playback over the line. The tape was undeniable, hard evidence. The next morning, I shipped the cassette to Guwahati via the 5:00 PM press courier vehicle. The front-page investigative exposure we printed the next day completely threw the tournament into a tailspin.
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The slim red Aiwa two-in-one stereo radio cassette recorder used to execute the 1993 telephone drop-wire recording hack, pictured alongside a two-month-old German Spitz puppy
The Best Correspondent Trophy and Desktop Jealousy |
Months later, the newspaper hosted its grand annual function in Guwahati with great pomp and show. The Chief Minister of Assam, Hiteswer Saikia and many prominent regional scribes packed the auditorium. It was never meant to be a Pulitzer or a Nobel prize, but for a young regional bureau chief, what happened next was unforgettable.
Suddenly, my name was announced. I was called to the stage to receive the Best Correspondent Trophy, a heavy brass globe featuring an eagle flying with its wings spread wide.
Being naturally shy and embarrassed by the public spotlight, I walked off the stage, found a senior colleague from the Meghalaya Police Public Relations cell who was attending, and handed him my trophy. I told him I would simply collect it from his office when I returned to Shillong.
Because there were many prominent guests from Shillong who had driven down to Guwahati in their cars for the grand function, I had plenty of options for the return journey. It turned into a truly memorable ride. I returned back to Shillong alongside the absolute leaders of the regional press: Manas Chowdhury, Editor of The Shillong Times, who was driving his white Maruti-Suzuki Gypsy, along with Bedabrata Lahkar, Special Representative and Shillong Bureau Chief for The Assam Tribune, and Subrata Bhattacharya, United News of India (UNI) Shillong Bureau Chief.
The next morning, however, the corporate news desk back in Guwahati displayed its internal jealousy. The paper's official report of the function published photographs but deliberately altered the text, claiming I had merely received a "consolation prize." It was a petty, incorrect edit driven by desk politics, but riding with the giants of Shillong journalism, I knew where the real respect lay. I chose not to argue over it. I simply let it go.
19:45 HRS: Hostile Visitors at Laitumkhrah
Investigative journalism in those days came with real physical risks. My parents and the family had already formally relocated to Calcutta, and I lived all alone at Bhagyakul, Laitumkhrah, looking at life in a new way through my work. I lived in a single room containing my bed, study desk, bookshelves, and a small, secret handmade vanity bar, which strategically helped me avoid drinking at press clubs or public events, ensuring I never looked like a cheap scribe despite my very low earnings. I was quite stylish during those days, and many acknowledged it.
My kitchen was a separate, temporary tin-shed structure located a little far from the room, but it was beautifully organised with a custom light-blue sun-mica folding wall table and matching linoleum floor sheets. To make sure I didn't miss news alerts while cooking, I had run a parallel telephone extension to the kitchen.
That evening, I returned home to Bhagyakul from our Lower Lachumiere bureau office. Around 7:45 PM, a heavy knock rattled my door.
Two large men in their mid-30s stood outside, smelling heavily of alcohol. One of them, who had streaks of slight grey hair, aggressively asked: "Are you Sandeep Acharya, journalist of The North East Observer?”
I welcomed them inside and sat at my study desk with my papers. The man pulled the latest edition of our paper from his coat, slammed it down, and demanded to know if I wrote the football report. They were employees of the state agriculture department, and their sporting racket had been completely exposed.
Handling the Ambush
As they grew hostile and demanded the names of our other reporters, I remained completely calm and used the active communication lines in my room to execute a few quick defensive moves:
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My custom-built wall intercom interface, engineered from an old landline telephone handset, a matte black rexine-wrapped chassis, and dual status LEDs. This live circuit allowed my neighbour in Chowdhury Mansion to monitor the 1993 confrontation in real time.
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The Intercom Bug: I had built a custom wire intercom connected to my neighbour and elderly dear friend who lived right next door. He owned a beautiful, big concrete double-story building with a compound, gardens, wooden floors, teak wood windows, and a tin-sheet roof with a small third-floor terrace. His father was a well-known advocate, and they lived there as a large joint family. I had formally written about this landmark as "Chowdhury Mansion" in my
Shillong: Then and Now memoir. While that older post mentions an early crude two-way phone layout, this newer intercom was 100 times more refined, featuring functional red and green status LEDs. The receiver of this wall intercom was resting slightly off its hook. As the men shouted, the LEDs on the box flared to full glow. The microphone was live, and my friend in Chowdhury Mansion was listening to the entire interrogation in real time.
The Ringback Distraction: To break their aggressive posture, I leaned over my telephone instrument, a standard DOT push-button dial pad landline, and typed 161, the automated line-testing code. Within seconds, the exchange automatically bounced a loud, ringing call straight back to my phone. I picked it up, pretended to talk to a senior police official about an important report, and hung up. The men visibly hesitated.
The Live Wire-Transfer: I immediately picked up the landline again and dialled my close friend, J. K. Kaul, the senior All India Radio Shillong news correspondent. When he answered, I tactfully held the receiver low so the hostile voices in the room flooded his earpiece. He instantly understood the danger: "Shandy, is all well with you? Are u in trouble?"
I hung up, turned to the men, and gave them a fake address of a fictional freelance contributor to clear them out of my room. They left with a warning: "If this address is wrong, we are coming back."
The Escape
The second they cleared the gate, I moved with calculated precision. I used to have my room lit by a self-made lamp stand with a shade that I could move from my study table to my bedside. I switched that main lamp completely off. Instead, I turned on two dim green lights, which were actual light enclosures from Tata S-model 1210 trucks that I had procured and custom-fitted to my ceiling. I chose not to put the blind curtain over the glass-paned door, I just left the transparent netted curtain in place. This setup was a psychological manoeuvre designed to create the illusion that I was still casually moving around the room.
I locked the door from the outside, gripped my physical DOT landline telephone instrument, paired the main telephone line with the intercom grid, and sprinted over to Chowdhury Mansion. I connected my phone line directly inside my neighbour's house.
From the high, vantage point of his concrete double-story balcony, I sat in the dark and watched. At exactly 9:45 PM, a convoy of 7 to 8 jeeps alongside motorcycles roared into the locality, making slow, rowdy rounds directly inside Bhagyakul colony. When they stopped and spilled out into my compound, I recognised many of those faces, they were a crowd brought in from the Malki area to physically hunt me down.
But my green lights kept them guessing, and the trap was entirely empty. From the safety of Chowdhury Mansion, I stayed completely hidden inside my neighbour's house for the next three days, coordinating security arrangements with my AIR colleague J. K. Kaul. When I finally stepped back into my room on the third day, my house owner smiled and told me: "Many people came looking for you, but I told them you are an incredibly busy journalist and no one ever knows when you come or go."
They never returned.
Thirty-three years later, The North East Observer newspaper does not exist anymore, the red Aiwa player was given away to my late elder brother’s close colleague back in 1999, and the media landscapes have completely changed. But the lesson from that 1993 football exposure remains exactly the same: when local adversaries or rowdy convoys take rounds inside Bhagyakul colony trying to use bullying tactics to invade your space, an organised mind, a quick technical instinct, and having your physical records in order will always protect you.
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