Samrajni Dasgupta, the wife of former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta, has filed a complaint with the National Human Rights Council alleging that he was tortured by Mumbai police while he was in custody in connection with the TRP (Target Rating Points) scam. Partho Dasgupta was reportedly admitted to JJ Hospital in Mumbai on Friday. His wife, Samrajni Dasgupta, said in her complaint to NHRC that when they reached the hospital, they found him critical in the emergency ward.
“He was without any pillow or sheet either on the bed or to cover him. He told us that he has not been given anything to eat since Jan 15th. All he could tell us was that he was mercilessly beaten up even in Taloja Jail,” she wrote in the complaint.
“Someone was being paid to beat him up to falsely admit to the story that he had taken money from Republic TV in the TRP scam case. Partho has been mentally harassed all these days at the Taloja Jail as well. He has been told that he might as well make a false statement since that is what he would have to do eventually,” Samrajni alleged.
“Since then we have not been able to see him or talk to him. The doctors at JJ refused to share any report of the tests conducted and medication given,” she also alleged, demanding to know why the family was not informed when he was hospitalised. “We have not objected to the legal whatever steps it deems fit, so why is his fundamental right being denied. We want Partha safe. He should not be harmed and made to give a false statement to satisfy people's vested interests,” she added.
The day Partho was admitted to hospital was also the day the Mumbai police filed a supplementary chargesheet against him, to which over 1,000 pages of his WhatsApp conversations were attached. The WhatsApp messages showed that he was close to Arnab Goswami, the Editor-in-Chief of Republic TV, and was in regular contact with him.
Republic TV issued a statement as well, alleging that Mumbai police’s investigation into the TRP scam, in which the channel is also implicated, is “motivated, vendetta driven and a blind exercise of malice.”
“The complaint makes it clear that under the Maharashtra Government a man was thrashed by the Mumbai Police, put in an ICU in a grievous condition, and no one has been able to see him or talk to him since. All because he was not implicating Republic TV and parroting the lie that he took money from Republic TV to rig TRPs,” the statement issued by the channel said.
“The deep conspiracy, the coercion, and the custodial torture has only made it clear that the entire TRP investigation by the Mumbai Police is motivated, vendetta driven and a blind exercise of malice. The latest allegations of physical torture being inflicted upon Dasgupta tell the horrifying tale of the state of affairs in Maharashtra,” the channel added.
Dasgupta, former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) was arrested in the alleged TRP rigging scam by the crime branch of the Mumbai Police on December 24 last year. A Mumbai court had earlier this month rejected his bail plea, stating that he appeared to have played a vital role in the scam to rig TRP as per the police's case.
The Mumbai Police had earlier told the court that Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami had allegedly bribed Dasgupta with "lakhs of rupees" to ramp up the news channel's viewership numbers fraudulently.
On Saturday, Pratyusha Dasgupta, Dasgupta's daughter, demanded that he be shifted to a reputed private hospital. She tweeted a message titled "A helpless daughter's anguished appeal", tagging PM Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the PMO as well as Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Her mother received a call around 3 am on Saturday informing that her father had been brought to the hospital in unconscious state around 1 pm on Friday, she said. For 14 hours nobody from the family was informed about Dasgupta's condition because the authorities allegedly did not have their contact numbers, Pratyusha said. When they reached the hospital, they found he was unable to speak, she said.
It was apparent that he had been "physically and mentally tortured inside the jail," she alleged. Prison officials were not available for giving reaction on her allegations.
PTI inputs