TRP scam Live Updates: Republic TV CFO to be questioned today, officials from advertising agencies also summoned

Republic TV’s CFO, who was summoned on Friday for questioning in connection with the Television Rating Points (TRP) manipulation racket, is set to join the probe on Saturday morning (today). Meanwhile, a local court in Mumbai sent four people accused in the ‘TRP scam’ to police custody till October 13. They include Narayan Sharma (owner of Box Cinema) and Shirish Shetty (owner of Fakt Marathi). The other two accused are Vishal Bhandari and Bompalli Rao. They are former employees of Hansa agency that was involved in the process to determine TRPs.

Moreover, sources in the Mumbai Police have told India Today TV that they have accessed evidence against Republic TV in the diary of Vishal Bhandari, one of the arrested accused. They said entries of several households were found in Bhandari’s dairy.

The development came a day after the Mumbai Police claimed it has busted a TRP racket involving three TV news channels — Republic TV, Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema. On Thursday, Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh addressed a press conferencing where he said the Mumbai Police has evidence that the three channels were involved in a TRP fraud and cheated advertisers. Singh said owners and top management of Republic TV would be called for the interrogation in connection with the TRP scam, while owners of the two other channels have already been arrested.

In the meantime, Arnab Goswami also dragged India Today in this fight and said the FIR filed by Hansa Research mentioned India Today TV’s name. The Mumbai Police, however, has clarified that it has not found any evidence against India Today in the TRP scam. The joint commissioner of police Milind Bharambe said India Today was named in the FIR but neither the accused nor the witnesses corroborated the claim.

A witness in the TRP scam has claimed that she was approached by a person in January 2019 who told her that he would be placing a barometer in her house to calculate TRP.

“He told me we will also give Rs 483 per month for placing the barometer,” the witness claimed. “In January 2020, one Dinesh Vishwakarma along with Vishal Bhandari came to my house for maintenance and TRP reading. They asked me if I watched Republic news channel. I told them no because I don’t like it.”

TRP is a tool to judge which TV programmes are viewed the most, and also indicates the viewers’ choice and popularity of a particular channel.

Manipulated TRP ratings result in miscalculated targeted audience for the advertisers, which results in losses of hundreds of crores of rupees because of such manipulations and fake statistics of TRPs.



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