Arnab Under Scanner

The Mumbai police is trying to bring English news channel Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami to the book in connection with the Television Rating Points (TRP) racket busted a couple of days ago. The racket was found involving three news channels, Republic TV, Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema

The cops had questioned Chief Financial Officer (CFO) S. Sundaram and some senior employees and some others believed to be close to the TV channel management. The employees were asked to appear before the cops on Saturday too.

In all likelihood, Arnab will also be called for interrogation after these employees, sources in the police department said. The police are also examining the audit reports and bank accounts of the TV channel.

Mumbai Commissioner of Police Paramvir Singh said that they were trying to find out the economic sources pooled for establishing and operating the news channel. He said that they have evidences to prove that the three channels cheated the advertisers with fake TRPs.

TRP is a tool to decide which TV programmes are viewed the most and it also indicates the viewers’ choice and popularity of a particular channel.

Manipulated TRP ratings result in miscalculated targeted audience for advertisers, which lead to loss of crores of rupees.

Meanwhile, editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami said that the police cases would not deter him. In the Primetime show hosted by him on the TV, he read out some verses which meant “I am the son of an army officer and has not been trained to accept defeat. Even now, I am the same. I know how to handle this vendetta acts.”

“Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray are behind the scene. This is a big conspiracy. Mumbai police chief Paramvir Singh should tender apologies for levelling baseless allegations against me,” he demanded.

The TimesNow news TV channel said that police also included India Today channel’s name in the remand note. “This is an attempt to malign our reputation, as part of conspiracy hatched b y Republic TV,” said India Today.

A witness summoned by the police admitted that he had accepted money but said that he did not know anything about the TRP. He said that he used to keep the Box channel switched on for two hours daily after some people told him that they would pay the power bill, DTH bill and also give him an additional Rs 500 per month.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai police had already sent four people into their custody till October 13. Those sent to custody include Narayan Sharma, owner of Box Cinema and Shirish Shetty, owner of Fakt Marathi.

The other two accused taken into custody are Vishal Bhandari and Bompalli Rao, both former employees of Hansa agency that was involved in the process of determining TRPs.

Sources in the Mumbai police department said that the cops accessed evidence against Republic TV in the dairy of Vishal Bhandari, one of the arrested. Bhandari’s dairy had entries of several households. Bhandari was arrested after he accepted that he induced families where BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) barometers were installed to watch Republic TV for a specific time every day for monetary gain so to increase the channel’s viewership which led to TRP manipulation.