The Mumbai Police has named Arnab Goswami, the editor-in-chief of Republic TV and owner of ARG Outlier Media, as an accused in the Television Ratings Points manipulation case.
Mr. Goswami has been named along with Shivendu Mulekar, chief operating officer Priya Mukherjee and chief financial officer Shiva Sundaram in the 1,800-page chargesheet.
On October 8, 2020, Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh had said that a TRP racket had been busted which involved Republic TV, Box Cinema, and Fakt Marathi. He had said that the channels were manipulating TRPs and were involved in distorting the system used by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) to rate television channels.
On March 17, 2021, the Bombay High Court had asked why the Mumbai Police hasn’t named Mr. Goswami as an accused in the FIR in the case.
The other accused include Partho Dasgupta, former chief executive office of BARC, and14 others.
They have been charged under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), 465 (punishment for forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 204 (destruction of document or electronic record to prevent its production as evidence), and 212 (harbouring offender) of the Indian Penal Code.
