Republic TV chief Vikas Khanchandani (Source: LinkedIn/Vikas Khanchandani)Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani has been arrested by the Mumbai Police in the TRP manipulation case — the 13th person to be arrested in the case so far.
Confirming the arrest, a senior police official said that Khanchandani’s statement was recorded twice and his role was identified during the interrogation of Republic TV’s distribution head Ghanshyam Singh who was arrested and chargesheeted earlier by the Mumbai police. “We have direct evidence against Khanchandani and have also found his link with earlier arrested accused Ghanshyam Singh,” an investigating officer said.
The investigators further said that Khanchandani was part of an internal WhatsApp group in which discussions on LCN (Logical Channel Number) would take place. The crime branch, in their chargesheet submitted in court, had mentioned that the channel officials also contacted cable operators and allegedly used dual Logical Channel Number (LCN), whereby its two news channels would show up in the genre of ‘kids channels’, apart from the ‘news channels’ category, thus showing up at two places.
The TRP manipulation scam came to light in October, after a Hansa official lodged a complaint with the Mumbai police following which the owner of Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema were arrested. In November, The Mumbai Police Crime Branch filed a 1,400-page chargesheet in the alleged fake Television Rating Points (TRP) case, naming six channels, including those of Republic Media Network and News Nation, as allegedly paying money to boost TRPs for around two years.
The charges applied relate to cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence with the maximum sentence of 10 years. All channels named in the FIR have denied any wrong-doing.
The Supreme court last week had turned down the plea filed by ARG Outlier Media Private Limited which owns the Republic Media Network seeking protection for the group and its employees from the cases filed against them in Maharashtra.