‘Who Gave That Info to Him?’: Former Maha CM Chavan on #ArnabGate

Urging Centre to probe the matter, Chavan said the WhatsApp leak was “a breach of the Officials Secrets Act.”

Speaking to The Quint, Prithviraj Chavan said that this was “not just a matter of WhatsApp chat leaks.”

(Photo: Shruti Mathur/The Quint)

Video Producer: Shohini Bose
Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam

In an exclusive interview with The Quint, Senior Congress Leader and former Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan raised alarming questions regarding the purported WhatsApp chats of Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, demanding a thorough investigation into the matter.

The Mumbai Police has filed a supplementary charge sheet in the fake TRP scam case that includes extensive purported WhatsApp chats of Goswami, which have now been leaked on social media and across news outlets.

Speaking to The Quint, Chavan said that this was “not just a matter of WhatsApp chat leaks.”

The “50,000 pages long transcript” of the chats include several controversial alleged conversations between Goswami and BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta regarding various news events, including the Pulwama attack and the Balakot air strike in February 2019, suggesting that Goswami had details of covert army operations prior to their undertaking.

In the interview, Chavan expressed that the leaks reveal that a “very serious national security issue was involved, and somebody at the highest level of government has given this information to Arnab Goswami so that his TRP ratings can go up.”

Urging the central government to probe the matter, he further said, “That is a breach of the Officials Secrets Act. That should be investigated.”

He also remarked that, “There are always two sides to a leak. Here, it’s clear that Arnab Goswami received the information, then who gave the information to him? At what level did the leak occur?”