Team News Riveting
Mumbai, June 22
The Mumbai police had named Editor-In-Chief of Republic TV and renowned journalist Arnab Goswami as an accused in the supplementary charge sheet filed the Television Rating Points (TRP) scam case.
The 1800-page second supplementary chargesheet has been filed in the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate Court, almost nine months after the First Information Report (FIR) was filed.
Besides Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani, COO Priya Mukherjee, Shiva Sundaram, Shivendu Mulelkar, Ghanshyam Singh, as well as former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta have been charge-sheeted in the case. The CEO of Maha Movie Channel, Sanjay Verma, as well as the business head of the channel too have been named in the chargesheet.
The development comes after Arnab announced his return in the television screen. He had been missing for the last two months. Arnab revealed that he was suffering from COVID and was advised a complete rest.
With the second supplementary chargesheet, the number of accused in the case had gone from 16 to 23, said special public prosecutor in the case Shishir Hiray, according to news reports. In all, 12 people have been arrested in the case so far. Charges relating to cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy have been pressed against the accused.
On October 8, 2020, the then Mumbai Police Commissioner, Parambir Singh, had accused Republic TV along with two Marathi channels – Box Cinema and Fakt Marathi – of manipulating TRPs.
The Mumbai Police had filed an FIR under IPC Sections 409, 420, 120-B and 34. The police alleged that they had received a private complaint that some households where barometres were fixed to measure the TRPs were being bribed to manipulate the numbers.
The Bombay High Court had granted Arnab limited protection from arrest on March 24, 2021. The Bombay HC had also directed the Mumbai Police to give an advance notice of three days to Goswami if it wanted to arrest him in the scam case.
