Arnab Goswami Arrest! 

The arrest of Arnab Goswami: a very controversial and polarizing news. On one hand, the people are rejoicing and celebrating the news. On the other hand, some are claiming that this is facism Such people are now talking about freedom of speech- something that was highly unexpected What happened? Why did it happen? And was it right? Come, let us find out about the case in detail The case in which Arnab Goswami was arrested was actually the case of Anvay Naik, It has got nothing to do with the TRP case and the Palghar case. It is an independent case in itself.

Anvay Naik Case

                                  

Our story begins two and half  years ago - On 5th May 2018, Anvay Naik, a Mumbai based interior designer,  committed suicide The same day, the  body of his mother was also found in the same house. Police discovered a suicide note in this case in which Anvay Naik, allegedly wrote that he was facing financial problems because several people owed him a lot of money and he had not received his payments on time, which is why he was forced to take such a step Three people were blamed in this note- Arnab Goswami , Feroz Shaikh and Niteish Sarda Apparently, all three had availed the services of Anvay Naik for interior designing in different projects But  no one paid Anvay for his work According to this note, Arnab Goswami owed Rs 83 lakh to Anvay for the work he did on his studio and Firoz Sheikh owed 4 crore while Niteish Sharda owed 55 lakhs .

                                               

This is not a new story. This was in news two years ago and if you check old newspapers, you will find the details of this case Infact, this note is also publicly available and you can see its photo on the screen. This incident happened in Alibagh, in the Raigarh district of Maharashtra In response to this, the Raigarh police had filed an FIR and the Republic TV had denied all charges Investigations went on for around a year and in April 2019, the Raigarh police filed to close this case by saying that no sufficient evidence has been found On 16th April, 2019, the judicial magistrate accepted the summary report of the police and this case was closed. 

But do remember that the BJP was in power in Maharashtra at the time. Like I have already mentioned in previous videos, the police dances to the tunes of the state government in their respective states. So, it does not come off as a surprise when some people claim that this case was closed due to political pressure. But obviously, the wife and daughter of Anvay Naik were not happy with this and wanted further investigation. They wanted justice for justice for Anvay Naik. This is why she had also written to the Prime Minister, requesting that investigation in this case should be allowed to continue.

In May 2020, when the government changed, the wife and daughter of Anvay Naik met the Home Minister of Maharashtra and requested re-investigation in this case Anil Deshmukh, the Home Minister of Maharashtra, directed the police to conduct an investigation. A special investigation team was formed. On 15 October, 2020, the court gave permission for re-investigation in this case.

The Arrest 

After that, let us move to the events of yesterday: on the 4th of Nov, 2020, all three accused were arrested by the police. You might only have heard about Arnab Goswami but the other two accused mentioned in the note were also arrested Right after the arrest, Anvau Naik's wife and daughter conducted a press conference and said that they were happy with this. They claimed that there was no politics involved in this case and that prior investigation was suppressed because of Arnab Goswami .

 Republic TV obviously said in response that this is the misuse of  power.  Since Arnab Goswami questioned the Maharashtra government and criticized them, the latter is seeking revenge As far as the payment is concerned, Republic TV claims that 90% of the amount has already been paid to Anvay Naik's company. And the rest of the money was not paid because the work was not completed and it was agreed that payment would be made after completion The actual arrest was extremely controversial itself. A lot of videos have surfaced on social media. Some videos show that the Mumbai police dragged and manhandled Arnab Goswami while some of them show that Arnab Goswami is comfortably seated on the sofa and the police is requesting him to cooperate and he denies with excuses. 

The entire day, the Republic TV ran the narrative that Arnab Goswami was assaulted by the police. But in the evening, the Alibagh court labelled the allegations of assault as false and baseless There was no assault of Arnab Goswami by the Raigarh police.

Ultimate Hypocrisy 

Right after his arrest, several Union and State Ministers of BJP started to tweet  that this is a state of emergency and that this was an attempt to strangle freedom of speech and journalism and that this reminds one of the time of emergency. The BJP supporters also started to tweet along the same lines Hashtags started to trend in favour of Arnab Goswami BJP supporters even came out on the streets to protest in favour of Arnab Goswami with his pictures and BJP flags. It seemed as if it was the arrest of a BJP top politician,  rather than a TV entertainer. This is extremely interesting because none of them even batted an eye

• when a Malyali journalist was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police on 5th October under the UAPA, only because he was on his way to cover the Hathras case or
• when Manipur TV journalist Wangkhem was arrested under charges of sedition 
• on 8th October only because he had responded to a post by the wife of a BJP leader Or
• when a freelance journalist, Prashant was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police 
• on 18th August, 2020 in relation with a tweet Or
• on 16th July, 2020 when Assamese journalist Rajiv Sharma because he wanted to conduct an investigation  in cattle smuggling. Then, these people did not feel that journalists were being attacked Or
• on 11 May, 2020 when Dhawal Patel, a journalist was arrested in Gujarat by the police on charges of sedition  only because he was criticizing the Chief Minister. Was not the freedom of speech under attack then? Or
•  on 7th May, 2020, when journalist Naresh Khosla was arrested in Haryana for informing the police about stone pelting Or 
• on 3rd September, 2019 when a journalist was arrested after he exposed a mid day meal scam in which schoolchildren were fed rotis with salt. His crime was to make a report on that. He was jailed under sedition charges. Or
• on 23rd September, 2020 when journalist Aakar Patel was arrested in Gujarat by the police over tweets regarding PM Modi All of these people were tight lipped. None of them said anything. Forget about raising a voice.

Actually, the Modi government is arguing a case of appropriateness of slapping sedition charges on journalist Vinod Dua  and that this was right and Vinod Dua should be jailed. Why? Because he criticized the Modi government and hence he should be jailed. This is what they are arguing in court Smriti Irani ji tweets to say that 'you might or might not support Arnab Goswami. You might hate him but if you remain silent here, you support suppression. Who will raise a voice in your favour if you stay quiet today?' "Who speaks if you're next?" This is what she has tweeted. I'd like to ask Smriti Irani ji - Who speaks if you're previous? I have already enlisted the case of ten journalists. This article  is going to be over 100 pages long if I start naming all of them who have been arrested in the last five years under the Modi government only for criticizing Modi or BJP or RSS The reality is that you and your troll army were tight lipped about these arrests because these were benefiting you All the journalists that were questioning the government and making you uncomfortable- it is okay if they go to jail. But when your most loyal player is jailed, it will harm you and so this time, you are agitating and crying out that this is fascism.

Arnab's Opinion

Before I tell you my opinion on this case, I would like to tell you what would have been the opinion of Arnab Goswami  had someone with opinions contrary to his being arrested in place of him. What would have happened then? I am speculating based on previous examples and Arnab Goswami's behaviour in the past In the case of Sushant Singh Rajput, there was no evidence that Rhea had played an important role in his suicide There was no note that was left behind by Sushant Singh Rajput alleging that Rhea owed him money and even the doctors in AIIMS had declared that this was a case of suicide and not murder But despite that, Arnab Goswami formulated conspiracy theories and fanned them and a media trial went on for ages in which sometimes Rhea was blamed, sometimes it was Bollywood they resorted to various theatrics and hasgtags like "Arrest Rhea" were run  and they urged the police to arrest her despite no evidence Arnab Goswami has resorted to a lot of drama for TRP. The SSR case is just one example.

                                           

Prior to this, sometimes he declared an activist who got arrested as anti national, sometimes groups were branded as tukde tukde gang,  The arrest of an activist or someone who speaks against the government has even been celebrated by Arnab Goswami On the basis of that, we can guess that if someone was arrested, and if someone like Arnab Goswami was running TV news channels, then, this incident might have caused hashtags to trend. For example, hashtags like- #ArnabGoswamiArrested, #AntiNationalArrested, #TukdeTukdeGangMasterArrested, #WellDoneMumbaiPolice Debates like Arnab Goswami was anti-national and wanted to break up the country would have raged in the media and this is why he got arrested Bombay High Court had even reprimanded the Republic TV and said that their coverage of SSR case was not investigative journalism. 

My Opinion 

But fortunately for Anab Goswami, people like us are not like him. This is why a lot of liberals wrote in favor of Arnab Goswami on Twitter and condemned the action of the police and said that this was a case of an over reach of power of the police Infact, some liberals went on to say that even in such abetment cases with a note naming individuals, the police should not make direct arrests This sets a bad precedent and puts every citizen at risk if the police always made such excessive use of their power The justification provided by the Maharashtra police is that Arnab Goswami would have interfered with the investigation had he been informed earlier. But even in my opinion, some kind of a witch hunt is being carried out against Arnab Goswami by the Maharashtra government because cases against him are surfacing one after the other- sometimes a TRP scam, sometimes something else.

conclusion

In my opinion, what Arnab Goswami does on his TV channel amounts to dangerous speech. It divides the country and spreads fake news on such a massive scale that it incites people to become violent in the name of religion/faith And in such cases law and the police should fight against Arnab Goswami to serve a befitting legal response to him to put an end to the way Arnab ismaking a mockery of the news on TV today. But at the same time, this case is about the personal matters of Arnab and has nothing to do with his journalism. This is exactly what a journalism organization in Maharashtra said- This is a personal case of Arnab about whether he made the payment or not and hence it should be treated the way it should be and not from the perspective of his journalism.

Thank you!