MUMBAI: The Mumbai crime branch searched the residences of two suspects, Ashish Choudhary and Abhishek Kolawade, in the TRP manipulation scam over the weekend and recovered laptops, pen drivers and cash amounting to Rs 13.2 lakh.
Police said with the help of forensic experts they will retrieve contents from the laptops and pen drives as they may contain incriminating evidence in the ongoing case.
Ashish runs a cable distribution company, Crystal Broadcast Private Limited, in Thane, while Kolawade is the owner of Max Media, a social media company. The duo are the 10th and 11th accused to be arrested in the case. They allegedly accepted money from various TV channels to rig their TRPs and fraudulently boost viewership for their shows.
The crime branch is probing the role of Republic TV, Fakt Marathi, Box Cinema, News Nation and Maha Movie’s managements in this case for paying households to keep TV sets tuned into their channels in order to inflate their viewership figures, which are a key parameter for media houses in placing advertisements.