By Gauri Lankesh

Arnab Goswami who is the editor in chief of Republic TV, has now been named accused in the alleged fake Television Rating Points case, in the supplementary charge-sheet filed by Mumbai Police. The Crime Branch had filed the first charge-sheet in November 2020. This named the first twelve accused in the case. The supplementary chargesheet in January 2021 included charges against 3 more accused.

Goswami, was added as accused no. 19 in the most recent chargesheet filed by the Crime Branch. According to this chargesheet, the Police in their investigation, sent a questionnaire to Goswami, in which he addmitted to the WhatsApp conversations exchanged with Partho Dasgupta, former Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Chief Executive Officer. The chats reveal how Dasgupta had been leaking secret information from BARC to Goswami so as to benefit Republic TV channels and their ratings.

The suplementary chargesheet stated that, from June 2017 to March 2018, while Dasgupta was working in BARC, TRP ratings of Times Now news channels were illegally manipulated, such that its ratings were below that of Republic TV channels. As a result, Times Now allegedly suffered a loss of Rs. 431 crores, according to a Times Now executive who reported the same in the chargesheet.

According to Bar and Bench, the chargesheet also stated that there is evidence showing that Goswami had paid Dasgupta for his manipulation of the ratings, which was evident from the jewellery and expensive items seized from Dasgupta’s residence.

Additonally, it was alleged that Goswami may have agreed to let cable operators and the Multi-system operators broadcast the Republic TV Hindi and English Channels on more than one channel, as he was the Managing Director of ARG Outlier Pvt. Ltd.

The Police submitted that this went against the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regulations.

The Crime Branch began the investigation into the TRP scam after it came to light that through certain employees of the Hansa Group, that ‘sampling metering services’ were being manipulated whereby people were being payed to watch certain channels to increase ratings.

This story first appeared on gaurilankeshnews.com