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Police seizures at Kannada news channel Power TV, that had just lately aired a sequence of tales claiming to show corruption by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa’s relations, has disrupted the broadcast of the channel from Monday night time.
“The police seized the server of the channel, changed passwords of all Power TV social media accounts, essentially leaving us with no avenue to go live. For a news channel this is as good as shutting it down,” Rahman Hassan, Principal Editor, Power TV, advised The Hindu. In a video message that has now gone viral, he alleged political vendetta by the Chief Minister, a cost that Mr. Yediyurappa has not responded to to date.
The channel’s Managing Director, Rakesh Shetty, who’s absconding, has been booked for extortion and forgery over the tales and sting operation movies linked to the Chief Minister’s relations.
A contractor, who the tv channel alleged was being harassed to pay bribe by a member of the Chief Minister’s household, is the complainant in opposition to Mr. Shetty.
The seizures have been a part of the search and seizure operations by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) probing the case. They had a search warrant from the Justice of the Peace court docket, sources mentioned.
“We co-operated with the investigation. Even when they wanted to seize the server, I requested them that they take the hard disc and not the entire server itself as that would disrupt the broadcast, but they seized it anyway,” Mr. Rahman Hassan mentioned.
The Karnataka Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) has written to the Chief Minister condemning the incident.
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