Harvard never offered ‘faculty position’, was victim of ‘phishing attack’: Former NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan

Former NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan claimed on Friday that she had fallen victim to a ‘sophisticated phishing attack’, and was duped into believing that she had been offered a job with Harvard University as an Assistant Professor of Journalism.

Razdan had quit NDTV last year after a 21-year stint to take up the ‘offer’.

Taking to Twitter, Razdan wrote, “I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. I’m putting this statement out to set the record straight about what I’ve been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media.”

In her statement posted on Twitter, Razdan said she was given to believe that her stint with the prestigious university will commence from September 2020, but was later told that it will start from January 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Razdan said that she began noticing ‘a number of administrative anomalies’ in the process being described to her. But she dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of a ‘new normal’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said in the statement.

However, soon she became suspicious and approached the university for clarity, she said. “Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I had received from the University,” her statement added.

Razdan said that the response from the university convinced her that she had become a ‘victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack’.

“I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism. 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 added.

She said she had filed a complaint with the police and requested immediate steps to identify and prosecute those behind the "abominable attack".

Razdan said she had also written to the Harvard University authorities. "I hope that the police are able to get to the bottom of this attack on me at the earliest and help me bring this unsavoury incident to a swift end," she wrote.