TRP charge sheet: Police name Arnab Goswami as accused

For The first time since investigations into the alleged Television Ratings Point (TRP) scam began nine months ago, Mumbai Police Tuesday named Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami as an accused in the case.

In a 1,912-page supplementary charge sheet submitted by the Mumbai Crime Branch in the Esplanade Court, police named seven persons, including Goswami. This is the third charge sheet filed in the case.

In the first charge sheet and a subsequent supplementary charge sheet, police had named “Republic owners” as wanted accused.

The case relates to alleged manipulation of TRPs by some channels to show they had higher viewership and, thus, get higher rates from advertisers. An FIR was registered last October and subsequently two charge sheets were filed in November and January, respectively, against 15 people.

In the latest charge sheet, apart from Goswami, police have named Republic TV CFO Shiva Subramaniam, Priya Mukherjee, Shivendra Mundherkar,



Amit Dave, Sanjay Verma and Ranjit Walter as accused. The accused are employees of Republic TV, Republic Bharat and two from Maha Movie TV channel.

This brings the total number of people charge sheet in the case to 22.

Special Public Prosecutor Shishir Hiray said the fresh charge sheet includes Whats App chats to show alleged manipulation of TRP ratings. He said it also includes evidence regarding falsification of documents on TRP due to which wrongful gains were made by the accused.

On Tuesday, an exemption application was filed on behalf of Goswami, which was allowed by the court. The next date of the hearing is on June 28.

In the charge sheet, police said TRP manipulation was done using three techniques.

The first technique, police said, was to allegedly pay money to people whose houses were used as panel homes where barometers were set up on their television channels. The channel they watched the most was given the highest TRP.