TRP case: No coercive action against Arnab till January 29

A division bench of Justices SS Shinde and Manish Pitale also extended till January 29, the interim relief for employees of the complainant company, Hansa Research Group, by asking the police not to call them for inquiry for more than two days a week.

The bench also took on record the status report of the Mumbai Police investigation of the alleged scam.

ARG Outlier Media Pvt. Ltd. had approached the High Court last year seeking, among other things, that the police be restrained from taking coercive action against its employees.

On Friday, ARG's counsel senior advocate Harish Salve told the court that the allegations of the Mumbai Police that Republic TV's Editor-in-Chief paid bribes to rig TRP numbers were 'nonsensical.'

Salve said the Enforcement Directorate had registered a money laundering case related to the alleged TRP scam and was probing the same.

He said, "The HC must call for a status report from the ED. If the contents of the status report filed by the Mumbai Police and ED differed much, the court would realize the case against ARG was malafide."

Meanwhile, ED's counsel, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, told the bench that the agency had readied its status report and the court must accept it in a sealed cover.

The Mumbai Police's counsel Kapil Sibal, however, opposed the ED's submissions. Sibal raised questions on ED's locus standi in the matter. He also said that ED was not a party in the case before HC.

Salve told the HC that ARG amended its plea and sought that the ED be impleaded as a party. The court then directed Sibal to file his reply to the amended plea and the ED being impleaded, by the next date of hearing.

Sibal then went on to question the ED's "enthusiasm" to file status report even before it was impleaded as a party.

Salve argued that the police must not have any opposition to the court going through ED's report. "I don't understand how the state agency is trying to stop a union agency from filing a report," he said.

The court, though, refused to take the ED's status report on record on Friday and said it will consider the same on the next date of hearing.

On January 6, Sibal had told HC that Mumbai Police would not take any coercive action against Goswami and the employees till January 15.

On Friday, the HC granted the police time to file its reply to the amended petition and adjourned the hearing till January 29. Sibal submitted that he had no objection to such protection being extended till then.

Meanwhile, ARG Media has filed several pleas and interim applications in the HC urging the court to transfer the probe in the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or any other independent agency.

To recall, the alleged racket was uncovered in October last year when the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) filed a complaint claiming certain television channels were rigging TRP numbers.