On November 4th Republic TV editor Arnab Goswami was picked up from his Mumbai residence in connection with a 2018 suicide abetment case. The case is related to the deaths of interior designer Anvay Naik and his mother Kumud Naik. After Anvay and Kumud died by suicide in Alibaug in 2018, a suicide note was found in which Anvay alleged that Goswami and two others had not paid him Rs 5.40 crore, creating serious financial difficulties for him. The Alibaug police had registered a case then, but it was closed in 2019 by the Raigad police. A fresh probe was launched by Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh in March, after Anvay’s daughter Adnya Naik approached him demanding justice for her deceased father.
Now as per a Indian Express report, Arnab Goswami, Feroz Shaikh and Nitesh Sarda, the three persons named in the May 2018 suicide note by interior designer Anvay Naik, on the basis of which an abetment to suicide case was made out is not linked to each other in any way, and did not commit any act that made living unbearable for Naik or left him with no option but to commit suicide. The report also stated that at the various places where Concorde Designs Private Limited, the firm run by Anvay and his mother, was doing up the interiors for the offices of the three accused, either the work was left incomplete or not completed within the timeline stipulated in the contract. “The accused then carried out the work among themselves and paid the vendors, as per the documents submitted before the police,” it said.“Investigation has revealed that since the past six to seven years (prior to 2018), Concorde has been facing financial losses, due to which Anvay Naik and his mother were under mental stress. Since his mother was a partner in the company, he throttled her to death, wrote a suicide note and then hung himself,” the report further said.
Details with the Registrar of Companies (accessed by The Indian Express) show Concorde had a Rs 26.5 crore debt as of fiscal 2016. Since then, the company was inactive and did not file its annual statutory returns with the Registrar of Companies. Anvay Naik’s daughter, Adnya Naik, had also claimed that the Arnab Goswami and the other accused knew each other. She alleged, “When my father would ask Feroz Shaikh to pay up, he would say even Goswami has not done so. How did he know who had made the payments? It means they were linked to each other.” She also claimed that Inspector Suresh H Varade, who investigated the case, wanted to ‘discredit’ the case and intimidated them into signing a statement, taking the complaint back. The family has also raised aspersions on Varade’s role. One of the objections is that he continued to investigate the case in spite of being transferred from Alibaug police to the traffic division. In the latest development, the Bombay High Court, rejected Arnab Goswami’s application for bail in the case. The court said that Goswami can apply for regular bail in the sessions court which will have to decide on it within four days.