Mumbai Police Make One More Arrest in TRP Manipulation Case

The eleventh person to be arrested is accused of bribing people to watch certain channels to boost their rating points.

Mumbai: The Mumbai Police on Wednesday arrested one more person in the television rating points (TRP) manipulation case, an official said. This is the eleventh arrest in the case.

Ashish Abidur Choudhary (50), a resident of Thane, was arrested by the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) which is the agency probing the scam. Choudhary is being accused of paying bribes, on behalf of some TV channels, to households where Bar-O-meters which record the viewership data were installed to put on those particular channels. This would result in the manipulation of TRP.

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Police have alleged that some channels were paying bribes to boost TRP fraudulently so as to increase advertising revenue. The Mumbai police are looking at the involvement of two Marathi channels and one English new channel in the alleged manipulation. Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation took over a separate case registered by the Uttar Pradesh police.