Prominent former NDTV anchor victim of phishing attack, offer of Harvard journalism professorship found fake

Nidhi Razdan. (Photo by Sushil Kumar Verma)

In a shocking turn of events in the life of renowned journalist Nidhi Razdan, an offer of professorship at Harvard University, for which she quit NDTV after 21 years, was found to be fake.

In a note shared on Twitter, the former anchor of the primetime show Left, Right and Centre explained the chain of events. According to Razdan, she was made to believe her teaching tenure at the prestigious university was to begin in September 2020, which had been pushed to January 2021 due to the pandemic.

She had even appeared on panel discussions as 'Harvard Professor', and given interviews about the said offer which led to the decision of quitting the channel she was a part of for decades.

She began noticing further anomalies and delays in the correspondence between her and (what she had then believed, were) Harvard authorities, but dismissed them initially as being a temporary result of the pandemic. On sharing her messages with Harvard on their request, she realised she was the victim of a ‘sophisticated and coordinated’ phishing attack (fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information or data by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication), wherein through ‘forgeries and misrepresentations’ and access to her private email IDs and devices, the false offer was presented to her.

Razdan has filed a complaint with the police, and written to Harvard University. With this public post and request to act on her complaints, she hopes the authorities can “help bring this unsavoury incident to an end.”