7 Years Later: CBI Closes NDTV Case, Adani Remains Owner

India-West News Desk

NEW DELHI – Seven years after it first conducted an early morning raid on the offices of NDTV and registered a case against the media outlet, its owners Prannoy and Radhika Roy and others, the Central Bureau of Investigation has closed the case “for want of evidence.”

Meanwhile the Roys were ousted from their top positions, several journalists left the organization and Gautam Adani took over NDTV.

The Wire reported that acting on a complaint by a private person – one Sanjay Dutt of Quantum Securities – the CBI had initiated its investigation against the Rays and conducted searches at their residential premises in Delhi and Dehradun in May 2017.

At the time, former officers of the premier investigative agency had flagged as unusual and irregular the fact that the CBI had taken cognizance of a private complaint in the matter even though ICICI bank had not filed any complaint of its own, The Wire said.

The CBI raid triggered protests by journalists and the opposition, who saw the raids as an attack on press freedom. At the time, NDTV was considered the only television news channel in India willing to be critical of the Modi government, the report pointed out.

The Roys were summoned and questioned in this matter by the CBI as late as 2022 while the Adani Group was moving to acquire the channel.

The loan taken in 2009 by NDTV and the Roys from Vishvapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd – a Reliance entity at the time which the Adani Group bought to acquire the channel. The agency alleged that the VCPL loan was used to foreclose an earlier loan availed by the channel from ICICI bank which resulted in an alleged loss of 48 crore to the bank.