Attempted Blackmail, Harassment: Arnab Goswami After Karnataka HC Quashes Case Against Him

Bengaluru: Arnab Goswami came down heavily on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah-led government after the Karnataka High Court on Thursday quashed a fake case against Republic Media Network's Editor-in-Chief which accused him of spreading fake news about Siddaramaiah.

In a loss of face for the Congress government in Karnataka, the High Court quashed the fake case against Arnab Goswami and termed it an abuse of legal process.

The High Court Judge Justice M Nagaprasanna termed FIR an abuse of legal process and asked the Karnataka government, "The Court wants to know what is the offence? Absolutely nothing, abuse (of process of law) on its face," Justice M Nagaprasanna orally observed as he heard the case.

Reacting to the judgement, Arnab Goswami said, “This case has incredible impact in terms of frivolous proceedings by various state governments against journalists and media… when I was arrested and when the then CJI Justice DY Chandrachud said that there has been a weaponisation of the process of law… and what the honourable Karnataka High Court Judge has said today is absolutely similar… so while you know the cases that they have filed — both the ones — the Maharashtra government case and Karnataka government case — obliviously have no bases, there is an element of vendetta that the Editor-in-Chief or the promoter of a news channel or network is the first person to be called in for investigation for any frivolous case and this is an attempted blackmail… so while there may be no case, we are openly told by people who manufacture these proceedings that these are attempts to harassment and these harassments comes at a cost because the individual has to travel, he has to appear in the court and all such things take a toll on their professional responsibilities.”

The case against Arnab was registered after a complaint was filed by Karnataka Congress member Ravindra MV.

Speaking on the case, Senior Advocate Aruna Shyam said, “The opening sentence and observations made by the learned Karnataka High Court judge today, it’s clear that this is a classic case of abuse of process of law because there is absolutely nothing to register the case against Arnab Goswami… he is in no way concerned with the alleged incident atleast… there is no ingredient to register a case. This government particularly is registering so many cases against journalists and social media activities since from the beginning, there are number of cases registered and repeatedly the High Court has quashed such FIRs. This is a classic example and landmark judgement.”

In December 2024, the Karnataka High Court had put a hold on the criminal proceedings initiated by the Karnataka police against Arnab Goswami.

During the issuance of the interim order to halt the investigation against the Republic TV Editor-in-Chief, the court referred to the filing of the FIR as a “reckless registration of a crime.”

The allegations claim that they aired a fake news report about Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

The allegation was that on March 27, 2024, at approximately 7:15 pm, the R Kannada channel had broadcast a news story claiming that traffic on MG Road in Bengaluru was halted to allow the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's convoy to pass, which consequently caused an ambulance to be stuck.

Following the order, Goswami said, "State governments must understand that they are destined to lose when they file frivolous cases and malicious cases. The Uddhav (Thackery) government has lost, the Sidaramamaiah government has lost and the Mamata government will also lose."