Give deadline to complete TRP case probe: HC to Mumbai Police

The Bombay High Court on Monday directed the counsel for the Mumbai Police to give an estimate on the time required to complete the probe into the alleged television rating point (TRP) manipulation scam.

“The law does not state when you should end the investigation; we are not saying end it in a month but give us a rough estimate,” a bench of Justices SS Shinde and Manish Pitale told chief public prosecutor Deepak Thakare. “We can understand if there are absconding accused or if material from other states is required to be procured. But for you, everything is right here.”

Thakare replied that he would seek instruction from the police department and inform the court.


The court was hearing a plea filed by ARG Outlier Media Pvt Ltd, the company that runs Republic TV, and the channel’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, to quash the Mumbai Police’s FIR in the TRP case and handover the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The Mumbai Police in its charge sheets stated that Republic TV, Fakt Marathi, News Nation, Maha Movie and Box Cinema had manipulated TRPs by bribing certain households to increase the viewership of their channels and programmes.