In a significant development, Editor-in-Chief of Republic TV was on Tuesday named as among the seven additional accused in a supplementary chargesheet filed in the much-discussed Television Rating Points (TRP) scam before a Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court here.
In a 1,912-page supplementary chargesheet filed before the 37th Mumbai Metropolitan Court at Esplanade named Goswani and six other employees from Republic TV and Republican Bharat TV channels as accused for offences registered against them under Section 420 (cheating, Section 120-b (conspiracy), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 465 (forgery), 204 (destruction of evidence) and various other Sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Apart from Goswami, six others named in the supplementary charge-sheet are Priya Mukherjee, Chief Operating Officer, Republic TV, Siva Subramaniam, Chief Financial Officer, Republic TV, Amit Mohan Dave, Sanjay Sukhdev Varma, Shivendra Mundherkar and Ranjit Walter.
With addition of seven names in the supplementary chargesheet, the total number of accused charge-sheeted in the alleged TRP scam has gone up to 22. In two charge-sheets filed earlier in the case on November 11, 2020 and January 11, 2021, the police had named 15 accused in the case.
Those charge-sheeted include: the ex-CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta and Republic TV CEO Vikash Khanchandani all of whom had been booked for alleged cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy, destroying evidence and criminal breach of trust etc.
In their three charge-sheets running into 22 accused in the TRP scam case, the police have said that the investigations in the case had revealed three kinds of tweaking of TRP data — inducing the panel homes where Bar-o-meters are installed by way of paying money to watch certain channels for specific time, placing of one television channel on two different frequencies by multi system Operators/Cable operators for one television channel and manipulation of television viewership data )metarule) received at BARC.
It may be recalled that on October 6, 2020, Mumbai’s former police commissioner Param Bir Singh had said: “The investigations carried out so far have revealed that certain television channels like Republic TV, Fakt Marathi, Box Cinema etc have been indulging in such malpractices. Certain witnesses have come forward to tell us that they were induced by the arrested accused perople and their accomplices for a monthly monetary consideration”. Singh had said that the Republic TV was a suspect in TRP manipulation and the police had received data from the BARC.
The TRP is calculated on the basis of TV channel viewership in a confidential set of households.
In Mumbai, BARC has installed 2,000 barometers installed to monitor TRPs. “BARC has given confidential contracts to an agency called 'Hansa' for monitoring these barometers. Accused would ask some households to keep some channels on even if they were not at home,” Singh had said.
The investigations have revealed that some of the people in whose homes these barometers have been installed have confessed that they were paid Rs. 400 to 500 for keeping their TV sets switched on even if they didn’t actually watch.
The preliminary investigations have revealed that the accused persons had manipulated the sampling metering services by inducing the barometer users by paying them periodically to watch particular television channels.
The Mumbai police have also booked the owners of Marathi channels -- Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema—under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating) of IPC and other sections of the IPC.