Essel Group chairman Subhash Chandra has told a Delhi court he was ready to undergo a lie-detector test while two journalists of his channel arrested for an alleged Rs.100-crore extortion bid refused to do so.
Sudhir Chaudhary, head of Zee News, and Samir Ahluwalia, head of Zee Business, both in judicial custody, were accused of demanding Rs.100 crore from the Jindal Group in the form of advertisements to the channel.
The journalists told Metropolitan Magistrate Gaurav Rao that they were opposed to the lie-detector test but open to giving samples for voice tests.
Police had moved an application seeking permission to conduct a lie detector test on the two journalists and Chandra, whose two-day questioning ended Sunday.
The investigators also sought permission to conduct a voice sample test on the two journalists.
Chandra, Zee Group managing director Puneet Goenka and the two journalists were brought face-to-face and questioned on Saturday and Sunday.
Police booked both the journalists under Sections 384 (extortion), 120(b) (criminal conspiracy) and 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Before arresting Chaudhary and Ahluwalia, police also charged them under Section 420 (cheating).
Both journalists were accused of demanding Rs.100 crore from Jindal Group in the form of advertisements to the channel.
Jindal had released a CD which purportedly showed footage in which the Zee journalists were trying to strike a deal with his company officials, telling them that their TV news channel would not air negative stories on Jindal Group if the money was paid to them.
Jindal, who is chairman of JPSL, had earlier claimed that the Zee executives had demanded Rs.20 crore for four years and they secretly filmed the meetings. They later raised the demand to Rs.100 crore for not broadcasting stories against the company in relation to the allocation of coal blocks, Jindal alleged.
JPSL is among the companies named in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report as one of the beneficiaries of the controversial coal blocks allocation.
Zee News chief executive officer Alok Agarwal at a press conference defended its journalists, saying “Our executives’ arrest is illegal. We strongly condemn arrests of our two executives.”