MUMBAI: Clearly, the face-off between the Maharashtra government led by Uddhav Thackeray, the Mumbai police led by its chief Param Bir Singh and Republic Media promoter and editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami is not going to end quickly or easily.
The two are resorting to a deep stare game with the bespectacled journo, and he definitely is not blinking. Loads of muck have been thrown around. TRP scam implication, WhatsApp leaks, financial irregularities – almost every charge has been hurled by the police – allegedly at the behest of the state government — at Goswami and his news network.
All of which have been denied by him and by the network, labeling them as “a conspiracy, a series of canards, defamatory comments and slander…. (they) try through underhand means to besmirch him because the allegations made on 8 October 2020 have begun to crumble.”
“Motivated corporate-political lobbies that dare to cast aspersions on them have used illegal methods to somehow implicate a journalist for taking on the establishment…any rational mind can see through the brazenness…,” says the news network in a release issued this morning.
The company says that former BARC CEO Partho Dasupta was allegedly forced by the lawkeeper to make an alleged statement implicating Arnab in the so called TRP scam. It further states that Dasgupta’s wife Samrajini has made multiple public statements that he was physically tortured in police custody to name Arnab Goswami.
In a bid to hopefully put an end to the alleged witch hunt, Republic Media has announced that its promoter and his wife Samyabrata Ray Goswami – who is also a senior executive editor in the news network – have plans to disclose their income, salaries, expenditures, loans, insurance policies, educational expenses, medical expenses, and bank accounts since 2004, when they moved to Mumbai.
“They will be putting all their personal financial details in a document and publicly handing it over to the CBI, the ED and, should the Mumbai police be interested, to them as well. Along with this, they will be disclosing all details of their taxes paid, mortgage payments on their home, and all EMI details to the agencies as well,” says the Republic press release.
The network has further stated that “spin-doctoring and false attribution of statements made by third parties to Arnab has become the norm in a section of the media of late. This attempt at trying to create prejudice is deeply conspiratorial, especially since Arnab has not made any of the statements which are being attributed to him by political parties and sections of the media opposed to Republic. Further, by disseminating this fake news through troll armies, fake screenshots and false attribution it has become evident that this deep conspiracy needs to be thoroughly exposed.”
In the release, Arnab has further challenged owners and editors of other media networks who have cast aspersions on his character to come clean about their finances too. The news network has unequivocally stated that any efforts to slander the journo any further will be met with a strict legal response.
