The Bombay high court on Tuesday asked what had prompted the Mumbai Police to hold a press conference last year over the alleged television rating points (TRP) scam.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes the police have an obligation to interact with the press? Why did the commissioner [of police] have to speak to the press?\u201d a bench of Justices S.S. Shinde and Manish Pitale asked.<\/p>\n
The court was hearing pleas filed by ARG Outlier Media Pvt Ltd, the company that owns Republic TV channels, and by journalist Arnab Goswami seeking, among other reliefs, that the Mumbai Police\u2019s probe into the TRP scam be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation or any other independent agency.<\/p>\n
The bench was responding to the arguments made by the ARG Outlier Media\u2019s counsel, senior advocate Ashok Mundargi. Mundargi told the high court that the police had\u00a0mala fide\u00a0intentions behind holding the press conference in October last year. He also said there was no evidence against Republic TV and its editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, but the police were trying to name them as accused \u201cby hook or by crook\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police were feeding the press that a particular scam took place. This points out that there was not sufficient material to say whatever was being said,\u201d Mundargi argued.<\/p>\n
He also said the police had arrested some employees of the ARG Outlier Media and named them as accused persons in their remand applications. However, in the charge sheet, the police had named the channel and ARG Outlier Media\u2019s employees merely as suspects, he said. \u201cThe investigation has taken a peculiar angle. In the charge sheet they are suspects, they are arrested and then they are shown as wanted accused,\u201d Mundargi said.<\/p>\n
Mundargi also said that Sachin Waze, who had been handling the probe into the alleged scam and who is now suspended over his alleged involvement in another case, was a controversial officer. \u201cThe officer [Waze] is also very controversial. This is the chain of events,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The high court will continue hearing the final arguments in the case on Wednesday. The Maharashtra government\u2019s statement made earlier this month to refrain from taking any coercive action against Goswami and the ARG Outlier Media\u2019s employees will continue till then.<\/p>\n
The ARG Outlier Media and Goswami approached the HC last year, filing a bunch of petitions seeking several reliefs in the TRP scam. They alleged that the whole case was\u00a0mala fide\u00a0and they had been targeted for Republic TV\u2019s reportage in connection with the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and the Palghar lynching case last year.<\/p>\n
The Mumbai police in January this year filed two affidavits in the TRP case through commissioner of police Param Bir Singh and ACP Shashank Sandbhor of the crime branch, saying they had not targeted Republic TV or its employees.<\/p>\n
The police said their probe into the case was not a result of any political vendetta and there was evidence to show that Goswami had connived with senior officials of the Broadcast Audience Research Council to rig the TRP of Republic TV.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bombay high court on Tuesday asked what had prompted the Mumbai Police to hold a press conference last year over the alleged television rating points (TRP) scam. \u201cDoes the police have an obligation to interact with the press? Why did the commissioner [of police] have to speak to the press?\u201d a bench of Justices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[47480,47481],"class_list":["post-60570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-law-news","tag-bombay-hc-asks-why-mumbai-police-held-press-conference-on-trp-scam","tag-why-mumbai-police-held-press-conference-on-trp-scam"],"yoast_head":"\n