MUMBAI: One of the main defendants arrested in the TV Rating Point (TRP) manipulation scam, Vishal Bhandari, had asked some of the ‘sample audiences’ to keep the India Today channel on in their homes, as stated by the Mumbai police, citing his former employers in their return request filed in court here.
Police are looking for a Rocky who they allege asked Bhandari to manipulate the Republic TV audience.
The police submitted the request for pre-trial detention requesting custody of Bhandari and another defendant, Bompelli Mistri. Both have been in police custody until October 13. So far, four people have been arrested in the case.
Bhandari was a relationship manager with Hansa Research, a company hired by the Broadcasting Audiences Research Council (BARC) to place people meters to monitor TV channels seen in homes. In the request for pre-trial detention, the police stated that during Hansa’s internal audit, they had recorded statements from a witness, Tejal Solanki, and a few others who said that Bhandari had asked them to keep the India Today channel on for at least two hours. .
Denying the charges, India Today said in a statement: “There is a malicious campaign at the moment by some vested interests to drag the name of the India Today group into the TRP scandal … What we are currently seeing is an attempt to RTV, the main defendant in the case of manipulation of ratings, to divert the blame to other networks to hide their own crimes. ”
Regarding the mention of India Today in the FIR, the statement said: “We had no prior knowledge of the FIR nor do we know of or have dealings with the arrested defendants.” The statement also quoted the city police commissioner as saying that police have found evidence suggesting that Republic TV, Fakt Marathi, and Box Cinema have been systematically tampering with the TRP system.
The incident came a day after Mumbai police issued an overnight clarification on Thursday saying that although India Today’s name is mentioned in the FIR, they had not found any evidence against the channel. On Friday, the police reiterated that they had not found any evidence against India Today.
City police said Thursday they had blown up a scandal in which three channels, including Republic TV, rigged TRP, an audience measure advertisers use in their planning, and arrested four people.
The police arrested Shirish Shetty, owner of Fakht Marathi, Narayan Sharma, owner of Box Cinema, Vishal Bhandari, and a private individual, Bompalli Rao Mistri. Two of the defendants were placed in pretrial detention on Thursday.
The request for pretrial detention, citing Mistri, said he used to pay Bhandari 20,000 rupees every month to rig the audience in 8 to 10 homes. Mistri also said that Bhandari used to pay Rs 400 to 500 per month to households to watch Box Cinema and Fakht Marathi channels. Police said they are looking for a Rocky who allegedly asked Bhandari to pay the house to continue watching Republic TV on a landline.
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