On Thursday, journalists thronged outside the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) office in Mumbai to cover designer Simone Khambatta in the drugs case related to Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Meanwhile, a scuffle took place between the reporters and Republic TV's Pradeep Bhandari was slapped by one of them.
Bhandari alleged that he was attacked by "NDTV and ABP goons" for "speaking the truth". However, according to a Newslaundary report, the journalist was neither from ABP News nor NDTV. The report added that prior to the incident Bhandari was insulting and "offending" other journalists. He even referred to other reporters as "chai biscuit wale partakar" and called them "fuddu".
The police had to intervene and stop the fight. Later on Thursday evening, a non-cognizable complaint was filed against Pradeep Bhandari at Colaba police station. The complaint was submitted by Vinod Jagdale, who is a News24 journalist and the President of the TV Journalists Association. NDTV's Saurabh Gupta and ABP reporter Manoj Verma were witnesses in the complaint.
Republic's Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami, popular for his histrionics on TV, put out a statement which read, "I am horrified at the attack by some reporters of a Hindi and a Lutyens channel on Pradeep Bhandari. Pradeep is an incredible reporter and anchor. Channels which cannot compete with him and Republic professionally shouldn’t come down to this."
Meanwhile, other than the video of the scuffle between the journalists, there is another video which has gone viral on social media. In the video, a Marathi news anchor is seen channelling his inner Arnab Goswami and lashing out at him.
"The nation wants to know. We have heard his yelling so far, but when it is his time to answer, where is his voice? Yes, we are asking questions to that journalist who questions Maharashtra, who questions Mumbai Police, the journalist who questions everything in the country, I am asking Arnab....answer...this is not my voice, this is not my style. I am speaking in your style. Answer," the news anchor said in Marathi.
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