The television rating points (TRP) scam is being investigated by the Mumbai Police’s Crime Branch. They have also arrested a former employee of the Hansa Research Group Vinay Tripathi who is from Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur district.
On Monday evening, Tripathi was arrested and is now the fifth person to be arrested in relation to this case.
Tripathi’s transit remand will be taken and he will be brought back to Mumbai on the evening of Tuesday. Vinay Tripathi will be presented in the local court of Mirzapur.
Statements of two senior Hansa officials were also recorded by the police in connection with the scam. Hansa is the agency that measures (TRP) Television Rating Points of various channels for (BARC) Broadcast Audience Research Council, which determines the advertisement revenues for Television Channels.
A team from the Crime Branch that had gone to Uttar Pradesh searching for Tripathi and arrested him on Monday.
Sachin Vaze an Assistant Police Inspector told that “Tripathi was a relationship manager in Hansa and left two years ago. He was in touch with Bhandari and used to pay money to Bhandari to distribute in households where barometers were installed. “He is part of the TRP fraud and was in contact with some owners of channels or their employees,”
The Police officer told that as soon as Tripathi came to know about the arrest of Bhandari, he fled. While seeking the extension of custody of the four accused taken into custody, on Friday had mentioned in their remand report that as per Hans’s internal investigation in June, it was Tripathi who has asked Bhandari to get at least five households to watch a particular news channel for two hours daily.
Bhandari was paid Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 for each of the five households for watching a particular channel as the commission to be paid to the households, Bhandari himself was paid Rs 5,000.
Bompalli Rao alias Sanjiv Rao, 44, Vishal Bhandari, 20, a former employee of Hansa, Shirish Shetty owner of Fakt Maratha and Narayan Sharma of Box Cinema. All the accused were taken into custody by the crime branch of Mumbai police earlier.
Two Bar-o-meters were found installed at Bhandari’s residence, the police had found out after his arrest.
The Police Official told that: “We are hoping that the questioning of Tiwari will help them clarify which channels were involved in rigging TRP’s,” the official added. The police are still on the lookout for two others in the case. The team lead by API Sachin Vaze, in charge of the Crime Investigation Unit (CIU) of the Mumbai crime branch, further recorded the statements of two senior officials from Hansa research agency. “We recorded the supplementary statement of the complainant in the case, Nitin Deokar, who is deputy general manager with Hansa in addition to the Hansa CEO’s statement,” the official said.
The (TRP) Television rating points are once again on the news, as the Mumbai police had busted a racket involving the manipulation of TRPs by channels to cheatingly boost viewership data and misled the advertiser, claimed Mumbai Police.
The current investigation revealed that the five-panel TV homes, wherein the household’s meters were installed to capture viewership and were compromised to rig viewership of certain channels.
