RIL to file criminal complaint against Telugu TV channel

Hyderabad: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said on Friday it will lodge a criminal complaint against TV5, a Telugu language television channel that on Thursday evening aired a news story indicating that the company could have been behind the death of the then chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) in a helicopter crash.
The channel said it based its sabotage story on a 3 September report by a Russian online bi-weekly tabloid, The Exiled.
Mark Ames, the author of the tabloid story, had said in the article he was speculating on a hypothesis that RIL could be behind Reddy’s death as the leader had demanded a share of the earnings for Andhra Pradesh from the company’s natural gas fields off the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin.
Mukesh Ambani-led RIL, India’s largest company by market value, plans to produce 80 million cu. m of gas from the country’s largest field, KG-D6, this year.
In December, RIL had found more natural gas in the KG basin. Soon after TV5 aired the story, Reliance outlets across Andhra Pradesh were attacked by mobs.
TV5 is promoted by B. Rajagopal Naidu, a businessman from Chittoor. Sakshi TV, owned by Rajasekhara Reddy’s son and Kadapa legislator Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, and another channel NTV, owned by real estate businessman Narendra Chowdary, too, aired the sabotage theory soon after.
09/01/10 C.R. Sukumar/Live Mint

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Jan 2010, Safety Jan 2010