TRP fraud case: SIT arrests former COO of BARC

The city crime branch on Thursday arrested Romil Ramgarhia, former chief operating officer (COO) of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) for his alleged involvement in the television rating points (TRP) fraud. This is fourteenth arrest in the case so far.

The city crime branch on Thursday arrested Romil Ramgarhia, the former chief operating officer (COO) of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) for his alleged involvement in the television rating points (TRP) fraud.

Romil Ramgarhia, former chief operating officer (COO) of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), outside the court in Mumbai on Thursday. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

This is the fourteenth arrest made by the special investigation team (SIT) which is probing the case registered based on a complaint filed by BARC through Hansa Research Group.

According to Mumbai Police, TRP ratings, which decide which channel gets the biggest share of advertisements, were being manipulated by three channels. Some families at whose houses barometers were installed for collecting data of viewership were being bribed to watch a particular channel to boost its TRP.

Crime branch’s probe revealed that some cable operators had used dual landing channel number (LCN) technology, which facilitated the viewing of the same channel on two different channel numbers at one time. Mumbai Police commissioner Parambir Singh in a press conference had claimed that two regional channels and Republic TV are suspected of being involved in this manipulation.

While seeking custody of Ramgarhia, the crime branch SIT levelled serious allegations on him in their remand application submitted before the court.

SIT said that Ramgarhia, who was COO of BARC from July 2014 to July 2020, used to have all the secret information about the viewership of the channels and he allegedly misused the same to illegally boost TRPs of Republic Bharat and Republic TV of ARG Outlier Media Private Limited.

While working as COO, the accused had access to information related to trades of TV viewership, news viewership, channel performance and changes in TV channel revenues. He allegedly used all this information to help Republic TV network to boost its channels’ TRP, the SIT stated.

Ramgarhia was also in contact with the director of ARG Outlier Media Private Limited, and chief executive director of Republic TV channels Vikas Khanchandani through WhatsApp. Besides WhatsApp, he also used some emails, and the SIT wants to interrogate him in connection with these emails. His laptop is yet to be scrutinised.

In the remand application, SIT stated that it suspects that in exchange for helping Republic TV network boost its channels’ TRP, Ramgarhia made huge profits, and hence, they wish to question him and want to scrutinise his bank accounts.

SIT also wished to look into the reason why Ramgarhia left the BARC job in July 2020, and if it has any connection with the alleged TRP manipulations. The court has remanded Ramgarhia in police custody for two days.

The spokesperson for Republic TV did not respond to HT’s calls and messages.

The SIT recently also arrested Republic TV chief executive officer (CEO) Vikas Khanchandani. He later secured bail in the matter.

According to the police, Republic TV employees had contacted cable operators to use LCN and promotional LCN technology to fudge TRPs. Khanchandani was aware of it as he was a part of the channel’s internal WhatsApp group where discussions on LCN took place, police said.

Republic TV’s distribution head Ghanshyam Dilipkumar Singh was arrested earlier. Singh had allegedly paid ₹15 lakh monthly for seven months, to a vendor to boost viewership of his channel, claimed crime branch in their remand copy filed before the court. Police also claimed that hawala channels were used for these transactions.

Singh’s name cropped up in the investigation while officials were probing the role of Abhishek Kolawade alias Ajit alias Amit alias Mhadik, who worked as a vendor for many channels, and was arrested on October 31.

Mumbai Police has previously informed the court that Kolawade’s sustained interrogation revealed that to amplify TRP of Republic TV, he had received monthly payments of ₹15lakh from Singh between January and July.

The remand copy further stated that Kolawade gave some part of this money to Ramji Varma, Dinesh Vishwakarma and Umesh Mishra to further pay to the families whose houses were selected for installing barometers, with instructions to watch Republic TV channels.

Numerous unlawful financial transactions surfaced during the investigations, which prompted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to launch a parallel probe to investigate possible money laundering in the TRP manipulation.