'Arnab, former BARC CEO exchanged friendly chats'

Mumbai: The Whatsapp chat between Republic TV's editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami and former BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta were merely chats between two very close friends that had nothing to do with TRP manipulation, Goswami's lawyer told the Bombay High Court on Monday.

The submission was made by senior advocate Ashok Mundargi, the counsel for Goswami and ARG Outlier Media, the company that runs all Republic TV channels.

Mundargi was responding to the court's query on what was the most clinching evidence cited by the Mumbai police's crime branch in the chargesheet in the TRP scam. "The highest evidence is these chats. However, please go through the entire chats because the police has taken these chats out of context to build its case," Mundargi said. He then read out some of the Whatsapp chats between Goswami and Dasgupta and told the court that the two had merely been discussing some "persons, market trends" etc.

"This chat was between two very close friends. There is nothing, not one text, or one message, which shows that TRP manipulation was discussed. They were discussing topics that two friends might ordinarily discuss," Mundargi said.