The case was registered following a complaint filed by the godman’s aide.
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The police in Bengaluru on Saturday arrested the proprietors and staff of a Kannada TV channel for allegedly blackmailing a self-styled godman based in the city and attempting to extort Rs 50 lakh out of him. The accused have been identified as Muniraju (61) — the owner of the TV channel Kaveri TV and Ravi Kumar (48), Murali (34), Manoj Kumar (24) and Manjunatha— as his staff, according to The Hindu. Reports said that employees of Kaveri TV had targetted 32-year-old Vinay Guruji, who is the founder of one Mahatma Gandhi Seva Trust. A complaint filed by the godman’s aide alleged that the TV channel would cover the events attended by Vinay but recently they had edited some videos by him to show him in poor light and those videos were uploaded on YouTube. According to Deccan Herald, it was only about two weeks ago that the TV channel staff had called one Prashanth JP who is an aide of Vinay and sought an amount of Rs 30 lakh as the first instalment. They said unless the amount is not paid to them, they would further put out other videos which will harm the godman’s reputation further. Following this, Prasanth approached the police and filed a complaint. As directed by the police, he arranged for the money and met the suspects in their Kengeri apartment. Following this, Manoj and Murali were nabbed by police. Upon interrogation, they gave the names of the other accused. However, this is not the first incident of journalists being accused of charges of extortion. Recently, in September, police had arrested another TV journalist for allegedly honey trapping a man. In that incident, it was reported that the amount demanded from the victim was Rs 25 lakh. The victim was threatened that his photographs in compromising position would be leaked if he did not comply. In that case, another journalist was involved in the conspiracy, police said.
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