Police have also moved to the Bombay High Court seeking the cancellation of the advance bail granted to COO Priya Mukherjee last week.
Khanchandani was brought before the holiday court which left him in police custody until December 15. Police recovered his laptop and claimed it contained evidence linking him to the case.
Abad Ponda, who appeared on behalf of Khanchandani, told the court that the police arrested him one day before his request for advance bail was heard by a session court. “The arrest is just to prevent him from arguing his case on Monday. The prosecution knew that a vacation court would not grant him bail and that is why he was arrested on Sunday, “he said.
Khanchandani’s name came up during the investigation into the role of distribution chief Ghanshyam Singh, authorities said.
“During the investigations, it came to light that Singh used to pay a monthly fee to Abhishek Kolawade of the marketing company Max Media, who in turn paid other defendants and also households to watch Republic TV during a certain period of time to manipulate your TRPs. Khanchandani is the country’s head of the channel and is responsible for all the routine work ranging from distribution to marketing of the channel and the illegal ways taken by other defendants to increase the channel’s TRPs, ”said the prison request preventive filed in holiday court.
In a previous pre-trial detention request, the police had accused Singh of paying monthly sums to Kolawade to display Republic Bharat’s inflated TRPs between January and July 2020.
Khandchandani’s arrest comes a week after the Supreme Court rejected a statement submitted by ARG Outlier Media Pvt Ltd, owner of Republic Media Network, seeking protection for the group and its employees in the cases brought against it in Maharashtra.
The crime branch is investigating the role of Republic TV, Fakt Marathi, Box Cinema, News Nation, Maha Movies, and the Wow music channel to inflate their audience figures, a key parameter that media buying houses consider when placing ads. . They are accused of paying money to households (where barometers are installed) to keep their channels on.
The police are looking for Sanjay Verma of the Maha Movie channel. “We have sent notices to those who are wanted and cannot be traced,” said an official.
Police said Khanchandani’s name was also listed alongside Singh’s in the internal WhatsApp group where a discussion (about the dual logical channel number) took place with cable operators. The police had twice recorded Khanchandani’s statement in this regard.
“The police have seized Mukherjee’s mobile phone. Her questioning showed that she was also in the WhatsApp chat group where the defendant discussed illegal ways to increase the channel’s TRP, ”the pretrial detention request filed on Sunday affirmed.
The app further said that Khanchandani has not sent the phone that has the WhatsApp chat group. He added that Singh has stated that he had adopted illegal means to increase the PRTs following Mukherjee’s instructions.
In the 1,400-page charge sheet filed last month, police had claimed that Singh, in collusion with cable operators and multi-system operators, managed to run Republic TV channels on a dual logical channel number (two frequencies), which violates the Indian Guidelines Television Regulatory Authority and thus manipulated TRPs. When a channel runs on multiple frequencies, it means you enjoy multiple slots across all genres; for example, a news channel might also appear in the movies and entertainment categories.
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