TRP manipulation case: Thane businessman Ashish Chaudhary arrested

Mumbai: The Mumbai Police arrested Thane-based businessman Ashish Chaudhary in the television rating point manipulation case on Wednesday.
Chaudhary runs Crystal Broadcast Pvt Ltd, which was paid to boost viewership ratings of two news channels and a music channel, the city police said in the remand application filed before a local court. This is the 11th arrest in the case. “From the interrogation of another arrested accused Abhishek Kolvade, it was revealed that Chaudhary’s firm Crystal Broadcast received payments between 2017 and July 2020 to rig the TRPs of three channels,” the police said in the application, which ET reviewed.

Republic TV, Fakt Marathi, News Nation, Maha Movie and Box Cinema are being investigated for allegedly manipulating TRPs “by bribing the households to increase the viewership of their channels/programmes,” according to the first information report. “A manipulated TRP rating results in several advertisers to part with huge money to undeserving channels, thereby causing unlawful losses to all the concerned parties.”

The allegation is that confidential information on the location of metered television sets was leaked and viewers were paid to keep sets tuned to specific channels.

Viewership monitoring agency BARC India had authorised subsidiary Meterology Data to install and operate the viewership meters through vendors, including Hansa Research Group. Five former employees of Hansa are among those arrested in the case.