MUMBAI: Days after Mumbai police broke a scandal that allegedly rigged TV Rating Points (TRPs) and arrested four people in this regard, the Zee News team managed to track down the mastermind of the scam from several countries.
The Zee News team reportedly discovered that 44-year-old Bompalli Rao Mistry, charged in the TRP scam case, lives on the third floor of a building on Versova-Yari Road in an extremely posh town in Andheri, Mumbai. . .
Bompalli Rao Mistry will remain in police custody until October 13 since his arrest in connection with the TRP scam by Mumbai Police. According to the request for pre-trial detention filed by the Mumbai police in the case, Mistry had employed a person named Vishal Bhandari in the TRP handling business.
Mistry used to give Vishal Bhandari almost Rs 20 lakhs every month for manipulating the barometer placed in the sample houses. Vishal used to pay Rs 400 to Rs 500 a month to the owners of the sample houses where the barometers are installed and kept the rest.
According to the Mumbai police, these sample houses were paid to watch certain television channels.
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While attempting to communicate with Mistry’s family, the security guard at their building informed the Zee News team that Mistry had stayed at this address for the past year and runs a company related to the film business in collaboration with a partner.
The Zee News team tried to interview Mistry’s family to find out their side regarding the TRP scam, but their maid told them that ‘Didi’ (Mistry’s wife) is ill and does not want to meet them.
It should be remembered that the Mumbai police recently cracked a TV Rating Point (TRP) manipulation fraud. He also tightened the noose around Hansa, an agency associated with the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), which calculates TRP.
Subsequently, the Mumbai police released a statement on the TRP scam saying: “The complainant had mentioned the name of a channel in her application. When we started the investigation, no evidence was found against that channel. However, we found three channels, including Republic TV and two Marathi channels: Box Cinema and Fakt Marathi, from TRP manipulation. “
“Two people related to the channels Box Cinema and Fakt Marathi have been arrested, while an investigation is being carried out against the third channel, that is, Republic TV,” the statement read.
Hansa, which is responsible for maintaining more than 3,000 parameters across the country, including about 2,000 in Mumbai, has reportedly been tampering with the PRT.
At a press conference, Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh said the ratings of BARC, an organization under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B), had been manipulated. Police said Hansa had misused the data, adding that the sample houses, where barometers had been installed to monitor ratings, were paid to watch certain TV channels.
In particular, TRP is a tool for judging which TV shows are watched the most and also indicates viewers’ choice and popularity of a particular channel.
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