In a pretrial detention report filed in court on Monday, Mumbai police said Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami had paid “thousands of rupees” to Partho dasgupta, former CEO of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), to “Increase” TV Ranking Points (TRP) from the two Republic news channels.
“… When Dasgupta was the Broadcast Audience Research Council, or BARC, the CEO, Arnab Goswami and other defendants in the case conspired to illegally increase the PRTs of the Republic Bharat Hindi news channel and the Republic TV English news channel . For this, Goswami on several occasions paid Dasgupta lakhs of rupees, it has been established in the investigation, ”the police told the metropolitan magistrates court while seeking the remand of Dasgupta, who was arrested last week.
This is the first time that the police have detailed Goswami’s alleged role in the TRP case. Goswami was not available for comment Monday.
While the pretrial detention report mentions the “owners of the Republic” on the list of defendants, it does not specifically mention Goswami.
According to the report, Dasgupta used the money to buy jewelry and other valuables that were seized from his residence. “Purchases include a Tag Heuer watch worth about 1 lakh rupees and jewelry and stones worth 2.22 lakh rupees,” police said.
Deputy Police Inspector Sachin Vaze told The Indian Express that Dasgupta, during questioning, said that Goswami had met him at least three times, at separate hotels in Mumbai, and “made billions worth of payments in cash, including once in US dollars. ” He said that Goswami and Dasgupta had worked together on Times Now.
Vaze said that in addition to Dasgupta and Romil Ramgarhia, the former BARC COO who was arrested earlier this month, police suspect the involvement of some other former BARC employees as well.
Last week, police said the recent arrests were made after receiving an audit report from a third party, requested by the current BARC administration. According to the police, the audit report, submitted to BARC in July this year, said that the ratings of channels like Times Now had been lowered so that Republic would top the TRP points. Police said they found some emails among BARC employees that supported the findings of the audit report.
In October, the Mumbai police had registered an FIR alleging forgery of PRT by certain television channels. He later told a press conference that investigations had found that three channels – Republic TV, Box Cinemas and Fakt Marathi – were prima facie involved in manipulating the TRPs.
BARC is the industry body that measures TRPs.
In November, the police filed a charge sheet against 12 people for allegedly manipulating the ‘BAR-o-meters’ installed in houses to measure TRPs. A second charge sheet will now be filed against Dasgupta, Ramgarhia and others.
.
