Siddharth Varadarajan who has exposed the Israeli spyware Pegasus and how it was used for surveillance in India via WhatsApp is the founder and editor in chief of India’s prominent independent digital media portal, The Wire.
Siddharth Varadarajan, a senior journalist known for his independent, original and courageous reporting has an undergraduate degree in economics at the London School of Economics besides a Masters and PhD from Columbia University.
While in England he was deeply engaged in left-wing activism, which had a strong influence on his journalistic career. Later, in the United States, he sought justice for the victims of the 1984 massacres and the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
In 1995, Vardarajan returned to India to work as a journalist, before joining The Times of India as an editorial writer. in 2004, he joined The Hindu, as Strategic Affairs editor, before going on to succeed Harish Khare as the Chief of National Bureau. In May 2011, Varadarajan was appointed as The Hindu’s editor via an extraordinary general meeting called by the Board of Directors. He was the first editor to have been not drawn from the family of primary shareholders in its 150-year history.
On 21 October 2013, Varadarajan publicly announced his resignation from The Hindu, citing a change in policy by the owners of the newspaper to go back to being a family-run-and-edited newspaper.
In 2015, Varadarajan along with Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu founded the non-profit online news portal called The Wire where he continues to function as the Editor in Chief.
Known for its fierce, independent journalism, The Wire has carved a niche for itself. Team Vibes of India congratulates The Wire for its groundbreaking expose of Project Pegasus.
