Top Indian news anchor says she’s victim of Harvard University phishing scam

Last year Nidhi Razdan announced she would join Harvard University as an associate professor, ending a 21-year stint with NDTV

Nidhi Razdan is an Indian television news journalist and author (Rex)

The leading Indian television news journalist Nidhi Razdan said on Friday that she has been the victim of an elaborate phishing scam, after she was led to believe she had received a job offer to teach at Harvard University.  

The award-winning journalist had already quit after 21 years working as a news anchor at NDTV, one of the country’s top news channels, in June last year, announcing in a Twitter post that she was taking up a job at Harvard as an associate professor in journalism.

Razdan took to social media again on Friday to announce that after she was made to believe that she would be joining the University in September 2020, the job offer turned out to be bogus.

“Alarmed at the scale of this attack, I have filed a complaint with police and provided them with all the relevant documentary evidence,” said the journalist.  

Razdan said she had believed emails that said her date of joining was being pushed back due to the ongoing pandemic, and she was told that the classes would commence in January 2021.

“Along with these delays, I began noticing a number of administrative anomalies in the process being described to me,” she said.

She said she initially dismissed the anomalies, putting it down to the new normal in pandemic-hit nations struggling to cope. It was only after she reached out to Harvard University that she discovered she had been scammed.  

“The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts,” she said.

Razdan said she has written to the university, urging them to take the matter seriously.

The Independent has contacted Harvard University for comment. 

A police complaint has been filed in the matter.

Razdan is a well known journalist in India and received the International Press Institute (IPI) India award for her reportage on the Kathua rape and murder case in Jammu and Kashmir. She is also the author of the book Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India, published in July 2017.