MUMBAI: ARG Outlier Media, the company that runs all Republic TV channels, has told the Bombay high court that the Mumbai police’s chargesheet in the TRP manipulation case does not hold any evidence against Republic TV and its editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, who is an accused in the case.
In a rejoinder affidavit filed in the high court to counter the police's chargesheet, the company mentioned that the Mumbai police had "falsely implicated" its and the entire case against its channels and employees arose out of an “unparalleled political vendetta” and a “deeply malicious witch hunt.”
The company also said its employees had been targeted for the “fearless news reporting” done by Republic TV on the Maharashtra police’s investigation into actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and the Palghar lynching incident of last year.
The ARG Outlier Media in its affidavit highlighted Hansa Research Group, the original complainant in the case, had not mentioned Republic TV or its employees in its complaints.
The company stated that Mumbai police’s crime branch too had not found any evidence against its channels or employees, and yet, the police went ahead and named its channels and their employees, including their top management, as accused and suspects in its chargesheet.
“The chargesheet though voluminous in weight is negligible in evidence against petitioners,” the affidavit said, adding that “there is not a single shred of evidence of wrongdoing in the charge sheet.”
It said members of Republic TV’s core leadership team and some others were pressurised to implicate the channel and other accused persons in the case.
“It is a matter of public record that Singh was physically and medically tortured in custody to falsely self-incriminate, and to falsely incriminate his organisation,” the affidavit said.
The company also said the purported WhatsApp chats between Arnab Goswami and former BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta were selectively leaked by the police to “create prejudice.”
In the affidavit, it stated that no actual stakeholders, be it advertisers, or news organisations, which were supposedly affected by the alleged fake TRP scam, had come forward as complainants in the case.
The Mumbai police last month filed two affidavits in the case saying the police had not targeted the Republic TV or its employees. It also clarified that the probe was not a result of any political vendetta.
A bench of justices SS Shinde and Manish Pitale is presiding over a bunch of pleas filed by the ARG Outlier Media, seeking, among other things, that no coercive action be taken against its employees and the probe be transferred from the Mumbai police to the CBI or any other independent agency.
