Mumbai:
Mumbai Police on Thursday arrested Partho Dasgupta, the former CEO of Television ratings agency BARC, in connection with the TRP scam case. Mr Dasgupta – the fifteenth particular person to be arrested in the case so far – was taken into custody from Raigad and will be produced in court today.
Last week the police also arrested the former COO of the agency – Romil Ramgarhia – from his residence in Mumbai’s Antop Hill neighbourhood. Mr Ramgarhia allegedly “provided secret and confidential information to certain TV channels to help increase TRP (television rating points).”
A senior police officer told news agency PTI that the authorities had also recovered WhatsApp chats amongst Mr Ramgarhia and the Director and CEO of ARG Outlier Media Private Limited.
ARG Outlier Media Pvt Ltd owns the Republic Media network, whose CEO – Vikas Khanchandani – was arrested earlier this month. Mr Khanchandani was later granted bail. Republic’s Head of Distribution, Ghanshyam Singh, was arrested final month.
Republic Television anchor Arnab Goswami, who was arrested from his Mumbai dwelling final month in a separate case, is amongst senior figures from the network named in a charge sheet filed by Mumbai Police.
Republic Television, which is one particular of 3 channels becoming investigated, has denied allegations and accused Mumbai Police of a vendetta for the reason that it questioned investigations into Sushant Rajput’s death.
The case was filed in October just after Nitin Deokar, an official of Hansa Research – an agency that placed the metres (that record Television viewership information) in sample households – filed a complaint alleging the procedure was becoming manipulated.
On investigation Mumbai Police stated Republic Television – which claims the highest ratings – was tweaking ratings to get higher marketing prices by bribing the households in which metres have been installed. The police stated they have been becoming paid Rs 400 to Rs 500 per month to preserve specific channels on.
TRP – measured by recording viewership information in sample households – is critical for attracting advertisers and enhancing revenues at Television channels.
In October, just after the scam broke, BARC stated it would pause weekly ratings for news channels for 3 months to “review and augment the current standards”.
With input from PTI