A Mumbai Sessions Court on Wednesday rejected the bail plea of former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), Partho Dasgupta, who is one of the accused in the alleged Television Rating Point (TRP) rigging scam being investigated by the Mumbai police. Partho was arrested by the crime branch of the Mumbai police on December 24 last year. A Mumbai court had rejected Dasgupta’s bail plea earlier this month and stated that he had appeared to have played a vital role in the scam to rig the TRP of news channel Republic TV, as per the police’s charges.
The Mumbai police had earlier told the court that Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami had allegedly bribed Dasgupta with “several lakh rupees” to ramp up the news channel’s viewership numbers fraudulently.
The court rejected his bail plea, even as his family sought better medical treatment for Partho, who is presently in the state-run JJ Hospital.
On January 16, Partho’s daughter, Pratyusha Dasgupta, demanded that he should be shifted to a reputed private hospital. She had tweeted a message titled, “A helpless daughter’s anguished appeal,” and had tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
On January 17, his wife, Samrajni Dasgupta, had filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) alleging that he was being tortured by the Mumbai police while he was in custody in connection with the TRP scam. She mentioned in her complaint that when they reached the hospital, they found Partho Dasgupta critical in the emergency ward.
She had also written in her complaint that he was not given a pillow or sheet either on the bed or to cover him and that he had not been given anything to eat since January 15. She alleged that her husband was beaten up in Taloja Jail.
On the day when Partho was admitted to the hospital, the Mumbai police had also filed a supplementary chargesheet against him and over 1,000 pages of his WhatsApp conversations were attached. The WhatsApp messages suggested that he was close to Arnab Goswami and also was in regular contact with him.
Republic TV has also issued a statement and alleged that the Mumbai police’s investigation in the TRP scam was “motivated, vendetta driven and a blind exercise of malice”.