The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain Arnab Goswami’s ARG Outlier Media’s plea for protection from any “coercive action” against the channel’s employees or staff by Mumbai police in connection with various criminal cases registered against the media outlet, terming the petition as “ambitious”.

Besides seeking protection for the channel’s employees from any coercive action in connection with the TRP manipulation case, the channel also wanted various other criminal cases registered against its employees and others for allegedly causing disaffection among people through as a couple of its programmes to be transferred to the CBI.

“How can we entertain this? The petition is ambitious. You want Maharashtra police not to arrest or take any coercive action against your employees. You want the cases to be transferred to the CBI? How can this be done in one petition? You better withdraw it,” a bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Indira Banerjee told senior advocate Milind Sathe who appeared for the channel.

Following this, the channel withdrew the petition.