In a hurry to carry out their witch-hunt against Republic TV chief Arnab Goswami, the Mumbai Police have ended up embarrassing themselves after they listed a ‘parody’ Twitter account of Arnab Goswami as the official handle of the Republic TV chief to allege that he had made defamatory statements against the Mumbai Police.
After trying all every trick up its sleeves to harass Republic TV chief Arnab Goswami, the Mumbai police on Friday had registered a criminal defamation complaint against the journalist over some claims made by him during a debate revolving around Sushant Singh Rajput death case in August 2020.
Mumbai DCP Abhishek Trimukhe had filed a criminal defamation complaint against Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami, his wife and the owner of the channel ARG Outlier for alleged defamatory statements made against him by Goswami under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 499, 500 (defamation) and 501 (printing or engraving matter known to be defamatory).
“The said defamatory attacks have been made with a singular view of assassinating his (DCP Trimukhe’s) official character and thereby…maliciously and deliberately causing undue humiliation of the Mumbai Police Department,” the complaint said.
Mumbai Police falls for a ‘parody’ account
However, in the defamation complaint, the Mumbai Police officer referred to tweets from a fake Twitter handle impersonating to be Arnab Goswami. The complaint further alleged that Arnab Goswami runs the Twitter handle @arnab5222 with nearly 2 lakh followers, and claimed that he recirculated the defamatory telecast to an even larger audience, through Twitter.
As per the complaint, Arnab Goswami made “grossly false”, “malicious” and defamatory statements during the coverage of actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death by suicide last year. It further claimed that these defamatory statements were telecast on the channel Republic Bharat during a discussion about phone records of actor Rhea Chakraborty on August 7, 2020.
The complaint lists six tweets put out by the parody account of Arnab Goswami “@arnab5222” to claim that Republic TV chief defamed DCP Trimukhe.
In its defamation suit, the Mumbai Police officer claimed that account ‘arnab5222′ put out a series of defamatory posts’ on August 7, 2020, allegedly operated by Arnab Goswami. The account since then appears to have been deactivated and a new account with same user name was created in October 2020.
Interestingly, Arnab Goswami does not have a presence in the social media platforms. Confirming the same, Arnab Goswami’s lawyers said that the tweets referred to in the complaint filed by DCP Abhishek Trimukhe were from a fake Twitter account. Republic TV, too, has time and again clarified that Arnab does not have any social media account.
Reacting to the gaffe of the Mumbai Polie, the Republic Media Network will said they will respond legally, as per due process.