Daily Times

India’s bad boy — firebrand TV anchor Arnab Goswami — is in the news again. This time his WhatsApp conversation leak with a fellow media executive confirming that the February 14, 2019 Pulwama “terror attack” was India’s false flag operations against Pakistan is hogging media space. Readers may recall that in the wake of the Pulwama event in which India claimed that more than 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel were killed, Pakistan was blamed for the alleged “terror attack” without any inquiry being completed and on the night of February 26, Indian Air Force (IAF) launched what it called a “surgical strike” against a make-believe “terror training” center near Balakot inside Pakistani Territory. Indian media, with Arnab Goswami leading the crescendo of chest thumping, went berserk, claiming it had struck deep inside Pakistan, killed 350 terrorists and demolished the terror training center.

The next morning ISPR nailed the lie by taking foreign and domestic media to the alleged location of the IAF “surgical strike”, which had missed its target of a religious seminary being purported as a “terror training camp” and failed to cause any damage other than felling a few pine trees. The same was confirmed by independent international satellite imagery systems.

That is another matter that Pakistan Air Force (PAF) launched “Operation Swift Retort”, the next morning conducting six airstrikes at multiple locations in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). In the ensuing melee, PAF fighters shot down an IAF SU30 and Mig-21. The wreckage of the SU-30 landed in IIOJK and its pilot was killed while the debris of the MiG-21 fell in Azad Jammu Kashmir and its pilot Wing Commander AbhinandanVarthaman was captured alive.

Despite suffering embarrassments, India continued to spin webs of lies and false claims, resultantly Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the general elections in May 2019, claiming that that they had taught Pakistan a tough lesson.

Now it has come to the fore that a damning WhatsApp conversation between the Republic TV founder and former CEO of the Broadcast Audience Research Council ParthoDasgupta, made public by The Print, a New Delhi-based online newspaper that Modi and his BJP had planned the air strike, just before the election, in a way that would ‘elate’ the people.

Incarcerated, fined and under investigation for a slew of charges, Arnab Goswami was apparently aware of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to conduct airstrikes near Balakot—48 hours prior to the intrusion into Pakistan’s airspace that ended in an international embarrassment for his country in 2019 but secured a landslide victory for the xenophobic BJP.

The transcript of Goswami’s conversation with Dasgupta, which is now part of a 3,400-page supplementary charge sheet filed by the Mumbai Police in their probe into the alleged Television Ratings Point scam

The vitriolic TV anchor, who is reputed to be harsh and grilling his guests, especially those from Pakistan, was himself humbled on November 4, 2020 when a team of Mumbai Police reached the residence of Republic TV chief Arnab Goswami and physically dragged him. Videos of a screaming and protesting Arnab being grabbed by the hair and pushed into the prisoners’ van spread like wildfire. The Mumbai Police detained Arnab Goswami and reportedly dragged him to the Raigad police station for questioning him regarding a May 2018  FIR, filed against Arnab Goswami in an alleged abetment to suicide case. An Interior Designer had committed suicide in his bungalow in Alibaug. In a suicide note, AnvayNaik claimed Goswami and the other two persons—Feroz Shaikh and NiteishSarda—owed him a total of Rs 5.4 crore. The Times of India had then reported Arnab Goswami had allegedly not paid Rs 83 lakh for a design project of a studio. Later Arnab was set free on bail but the lawsuit against him is proceeding.

The crux of Arnab Goswami’s daily talk shows is hosting guests from Pakistan, harassing them with a barrage of questions, butting them when they attempt to respond and lowering the volume of their microphones, providing his Indian viewers the sadistic pleasure of putting his Pakistani participants in the dock.

To rub salt in the wound, on December 23, 2020, British media watchdog Office of Communications (Ofcom) found an episode aired by Republic Bharat, hosted by Arnab Goswami in July 2019 amounting to hate speech and slapped a British Pounds 20,000 (Rs. 4.3 Million) fine on Arnab Goswami-owned Hindi news channel Republic Bharat. The regulatory body found that the segment, which was focused on Pakistan, was unjustifiably offensive in nature, and deemed it as hate speech. Following the penalty, Ofcom notified Republic that it must stop airing live debates on Indo-Pakistan relations “with immediate effect” and ensure further reviewing of content for UK viewers before being aired.

Indian media was ecstatic at the launch of its moon probe mission Chandrayaan 2 on 22 July 2019. On the same evening in his live show Poochtahai Bharat, hosted by the controversial news anchor and Republic Media’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, instead of focusing India’s Chandrayaan mission, repeatedly stated how Pakistan was inferior to India in terms of technology while its scientists, army and political leadership were terrorists and beggars. Ironically, on September 07, 2019, Chandrayaan-2 mission’s Vikram lander failed in its attempt to land and crashed, leaving India with egg on its face.

The latest exposé of the conversation dated 23 February 2019, reveals that Goswami informed Dasgupta that “something big will happen”. When the latter inquired if it was about “Dawood”, the Republic TV anchor responded, “No sir, Pakistan. Something major will be done this time.” The transcript of Goswami’s conversation with Dasgupta, which is now part of a 3,400-page supplementary charge sheet filed by the Mumbai Police in their probe into the alleged Television Ratings Point scam, should be used along with the bone-chilling disclosures of European Union’s DisinfoLab to prove heinous Indian plots to denigrate Pakistan.