The 1800-page second supplementary chargesheet has been filed in the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate Court, nine months after the FIR was filed.
Owner and editor-in-chief of Republic TV, Arnab Goswami, has been named as an accused in the supplementary charge sheet filed by the Mumbai police in the Television Rating Points (TRP) scam case. The 1800-page second supplementary chargesheet has been filed in the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate Court, nine months after the FIR was filed. Several Republic TV employees including 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 chargesheeted in the case. Apart from Republic Network employees, CEO of Maha Movie Channel, Sanjay Verma, as well as the business head of the channel too have been named in the chargesheet. With the second supplementary chargesheet, the total number of accused in the case has gone from 16 to 23, said special public prosecutor in the case Shishir Hiray, according to news reports. A total of 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. Arnab Goswami had approached the HC in 2020 with petitions seeking relief in the TRP scam. He had alleged that the case was malafide, and that he and his channel, Republic TV, had been targeted by the Mumbai Police as vendetta for their coverage of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death as well as the Palghar lynching case. The Mumbai Police had denied the allegations in affidavits filed before the court where they had said that they had found evidence to show that Arnab had connived with senior officials of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) to rig the TRPs of Republic TV. Read: Explainer: BARC audit report shows employees colluded to change channel ratings
No comments:
Post a Comment