After Republic Television editor Arnab Goswami’s arrest, Union minister of information and broadcasting Prakash Javadekar slammed Maharashtra Police’s attack on press freedom and compared it to those of “Emergency days”. “We condemn the attack on press freedom in #Maharashtra. This is not the way to treat the Press. This reminds us of the emergency days when the press was treated like this,” the minister tweeted without taking the name of either Goswami or his channel.
On Wednesday morning, Goswami was detained and arrested by the Alibaugh Police in connection with a 2018 case of abetment to suicide.
In 2018, a 53-year-old interior designer Anvay Naik and his mother Kumud Naik died by suicide blaming Arnab Goswami and two others — Feroz Shaikh and Niteish Sarda — for not paying the dues running to crores for the interior services that their company Concorde Designs Private Limited rendered for them.
A case of abetment to suicide was filed by the Alibaug Police but reports said in 2019 it got closed.
In May 2020, Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh announced a fresh CID investigation into the case after Adnya Naik, daughter of Avnay Naik, approached him and complained that the Alibaug police had not investigated the “non-payment of dues from Arnab Goswami’s Republic”.
The arrest of Arnab Goswami comes at a time when he is at a loggerheads with the state government over a chain of issues involving the investigation into Sushant Singh Rajput’s death, TRP scam etc.
