Messi visit row: Keralam CM denies police disrupted news operations at Reporter TV office during searches

Keralam Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan on Wednesday denied that the police disrupted news operations at the office of the Reporter Broadcasting Corporation (RBC) in Kochi. Mr Satheesan said the Special Investigation Team (SIT) had procured a search warrant from the concerned magistrate court to inspect the television channel’s office. 

He noted that the search warrant was predicated on an FIR registered by the SIT in connection with its probe into the suspected conspiracy to defraud the government and Keralam’s football fans by falsely promising to secure the presence of the 2022 FIFA World Cup-winning Argentina team and its former iconic captain, Lionel Messi, for a friendly match at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi in August 2025. 

Mr Satheesan noted that the government had also tasked the SIT with examining whether the promoters behind the “botched” scheme and their backers in the previous dispensation had abused power, caused loss to the public exchequer, and abetted money laundering and tax evasion. 

He hinted that the probe was at a preliminary stage and the SIT might register more cases and indict more people, including those who held high constitutional office in the previous LDF government, if its inquiry reveals more cognisable offences. 

Mr Satheesan said Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan was “weeping crocodile tears”. Mr. Vijayan had accused the UDF of trespassing on press freedom.

He said Mr Vijayan, as LDF’s Chief Minister, had presided over the arrest of five journalists of Malayalam television channels for publishing news inconvenient to the government in 2017. “I am not reeling out the names of other journalists and news channels who faced the LDF’s wrath for holding a mirror to the previous government’s wrongdoings and excesses”, he added. 

Earlier, Mr Vijayan, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] general secretary M.A. Baby, CPI(M) State secretariat member and former Law Minister P. Rajeeve, had accused the UDF of “borrowing a page from the Modi government’s playbook” to stifle and intimidate the press in Kerala. The CPI(M) said the police raids at RBC’s editorial offices were meant to have a chilling effect on the media not beholden to the Congress government. 

Additional Director General of Police, P. Vijayan, who is heading the SIT, said investigators had videographed the search operation, including at the premises of RBC’s chief executive officer and news presenter, Anto Augustine. “At no stage did the SIT interfere in RBC’s editorial operations”, he said. 

Mr Vijayan denied that the SIT had confiscated the telephones of RBC journalists and scoured their laptops and digital devices to identify the news channel’s sources in the government and outside “The SIT conducted the raid in the presence of independent witnesses. Some documents relevant to the investigation were in the digital lockers, which the SIT had sought with the court’s permission”, he added.