Delhi police chargesheets Subhash Chandra, two editors

Chandra's son not named in the chargesheet in Zee News bribery scam

Delhi Police have filed a chargesheet against Subhash Chandra, Zee Group Chairman, and two editors of the news channel, Sudhir Chaudhury and Samir Ahluwalia, for allegedly asking for Rs.100 crore from Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Naveen Jindal for not airing news damaging to the company.

Senior officials of the crime branch of Delhi Police said that the three people were chargesheeted for extortion, criminal conspiracy and cheating under sections 384, 120B and 420. Police said that Punit Goenka, Subhash Chandra’s son and managing director of the Zee Entertainment Enterprise Limited, was not named in the chargesheet and investigation in the case was still on.

The chargesheet was filed by the police on Tuesday evening on the last day of office for Neeraj Kumar as the commissioner of police. However, Zee Group did not want to comment on the chargesheet.

Delhi police officials said that they always treated Chandra and the two editors as an accused in the case and Chandra and his son Punit Goenka were questioned by the crime branch to find out the details of the alleged deal.

The father and son were called by the crime branch in December last year for questioning in the case. The court had asked Chandra and his son Punit Goenka to join the police investigations and had asked them to surrender their passport.   

The extortion case first came to light in November last year after Jindal formally launched a complaint to Delhi Police alleging Chaudhury and Ahluwalia of demanding Rs.100 crore from the company. Delhi Police soon arrested the two editors on November 27 last year but they were later granted bail.

Delhi Police officials said that they have phone records of Chandra and Ahluwalia to establish that the two were in touch when the editors had allegedly tried to extort money from Jindal. The editors of the news channel had said in their defence that they were carrying out a sting operation on members of Jindal’s company who had offered them money not to carry a news report on the coal block allocation scam.

However, Jindal had also produced video footage allegedly showing Ahluwalia and Chaudhury talking about money. Senior members of the Zee news had initially said that the police action against them was “designed for something else.”