On Wednesday, January 20, a Mumbai Sessions Court rejected the bail plea of former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta with regards to the Television Rating Points Scam case.
The former CEO of BARC was earlier arrested by the Mumbai Police on December 24. He was in police custody till December 31, after which he was remanded to judicial custody for two weeks. As per reports, Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) Shishir Hirey had opposed the bail plea for the State, arguing that Dasgupta had misused his position as CEO of BARC for personal gain.
Furthermore, the SPP also referred to the chats allegedly exchanged between Dasgupta and Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami adding that Goswami and Dasgupta had colluded to manipulate the TRPs of Republic TV channels.
Meanwhile, earlier on January 16, Partho Dasgupta was admitted in the ICU of state-run JJ hospital in central Mumbai. Dasgupta, a diabetic, was rushed to the hospital from the Taloja Central Prison in Navi Mumbai in the early hours of Saturday after his blood sugar levels went up the previous day. This comes days after WhatsApp conversations between Arnab Goswami and Partho Dasgupta got leaked into the public domain leading to further conjecture around the entire case.
Meanwhile, back on December 13, 2020, the crime branch of Mumbai Police arrested Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani in connection with the fake TRP scam case. Kanchandani is the thirteenth person to be arrested in the case after Arnab Goswami and Ghanshyam Singh.