Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani has been remanded to two days police custody by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court Mumbai on Sunday in connection with the fake TRP scam case. He was arrested by the Mumbai Police earlier in the day as part of its continued campaign against the news network.
https://twitter.com/barandbench/status/1338100999131521027?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwVikas Khanchandani and Chief Financial Officer Sivasubramanian Sundaram had moved Sessions Court on Thursday seeking anticipatory bail. The arrest of Republic TV CEO interestingly comes just a day ahead of his interim bail hearing, that was scheduled to be heard on Monday.
The applicants had alleged, “The entire interrogation of the applicant was an exercise to pressurise him, intimidate him and essentially harass him into churning out falsehoods to implicate ARG and Arnab Goswami. The applicant fears that, despite having continuously co-operated, he will be arrested in the case for the sole reason that he did not spin mistruths, despite the incessant pressure deployed and unparalleled levels of harassment meted out to the Applicant, to enable the pre-determined, pre-judged and baseless narrative of the respondent so as to implicate a news organisation that has been seeking accountability from the respondent.”
“The malice of the respondent became evident from the manner in which the Crime Branch has been conducting their investigation in the TRP manner. After a lapse of almost two months from being first summoned in relation to the said FIR, the Applicant for the first time in December has now started receiving notices under Section 41A of CrPC, under the false pretext that there were grounds to question the Applicant,” they had added.
Fake TRP scam
On the 8th of October, Mumbai Police Commissioner Parambir Singh held a press conference where he categorically stated that Mumbai police have been alerted about a new racket involving false television rating points (TRP).
Param Bir Singh had specifically mentioned that Hansa Research had filed a complaint with the police. Interestingly, in this FIR that was filed by Hansa Research, Republic TV was not mentioned even once. The channel that was mentioned several times was India Today.