The Thiruvananthapuram MP accusses Republic TV of sullying his image to improve TV ratings

Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor told a magistrate court here on Wednesday that television news anchor Arnab Goswami had deliberately sullied his image to increase the ratings for the newly launched Republic TV.

Clad in his trade-mark light blue cotton kurta, Mr. Tharoor spend over 15 minutes in the witness box articulating the grief he had endured when the channel had “unfairly” linked him to his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s death in a hotel suite in New Delhi in 2014.

He told Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) P.V. Aneesh Kumar that Mr. Goswami had used a series of audio tapes of questionable veracity and biased talk show participants to slander him repeatedly.

Mr. Tharoor deposed that TV anchor used the “vilest language” to insinuate that he had some dubious role in Pushkar’s death “when the New Delhi police has not concluded there is any crime involved and has not filed any charge against me (Tharoor) or anyone else”.

Nonetheless, Republic TV “broadcast a series of lies” to rouse suspicion about his conduct immediately after Pushkar’s death.

“He lied I had removed the body from one room to another. He lied I had come back to the hotel around the time of her death. He further lied that the CC-TV cameras in hotel were not working. Not only did he lie, he knew he was lying. For one, he ignored the hotel’s public statement in 2014 that the surveillance cameras were proper in order”, Mr. Tharoor told the CJM.

The MP made his case against Mr. Goswami in a sweltering court room jam-packed with congressmen and lawyers.

Mr. Goswami had termed him “a coward” for not coming on the Republic TV show to “answer his lies”. He “called for my arrest”, the MP said.

The public appeared misled by “his lies” as evidenced in the large number of adverse posts in the social media. The defamation should be penalised to prevent those media persons who often act with impunity as police, judge and executioner, all rolled into one.

The court will hear the case again on July 20.