Amid the row of TRP scam of Republic TV, the Mumbai Police has sent summos to six people — Vikas Khanchandani, the CEO of Republic TV, Hersh Bhandari and Priya Mukherjee, the COOs of the channel, Ghanshyam Singh, who heads the channel’s distribution, CEO of Hansa Research Group Praveen Nijhara and another employee All six have been asked to report at 9am on Sunday.
The joint commissioner of Crime Branch Milind Bharambe has said that the fresh summons have been issued to probe into the financial angle in the TRP scam.
The editor-in-chief of Republic TV Arnab Goswami has been denying all the allegations in the matter and has put up a vidoe message on the channel’s website on Friday saying that the channel’s name was not mentioned in the FIR.
Goswami added that the channel has been targetted for coverage on Sushant Singh Rajput case.
Mumbai Police officers said Singh was being summoned for the second time after he was issued a summons on October 9 to which he responded saying he was out of the city till October 16.
But a second summons has been issued by the crime branch for him for October 11 at 9am.
Mumbai crime branch has now taken the assistance of the Economic Offences Wing to probe into the financial irregularities into the matter when it discovered that more than a crore of rupees was transfored to the bank account of the accused Bompalli Rao Mistry alias Sanjiv Rao in the past ten months. The agency has also written a note regarding the matter to the GST office and income-tax department for a comprehensive investigation into the financial aspects in the said TRP case.
As per the information, Mistry used to give Rs. 20,000 each month to the VIshal Bhandari who in turn used to distribute it to the households where barometers have been installed. As per the officials of the Crime branch, statements from 33 of the 83 households controlled by Bhandari have been recorded and seven teams have been formed to arrest the accused in seven states. .
