Arnab Goswami (File photo) MUMBAI: Since its launch in May 2017, Arnab Goswami owned news channel Republic TV had gained ‘illegal’ access to an additional 22 million users of a Prasar Bharati-owned direct-to-home (DTH) service, DD FreeDish, without paying the government for it. Skirting an auction process which required channels to shell out Rs 8-12 crore yearly as carriage fees for a slot, Goswami’s English news channel was broadcast for over two years in an unencrypted form on a bandwidth accessible to all users of the FreeDish service. The issue — loss to exchequer as well as unfair advantage enjoyed by Republic — was brought to the notice of the information & broadcasting ministry (MIB) by competitors, and the complaint was forwarded to Prasar Bharati. However, the practice continued till September 2019, when a private DTH service, Dish TV, with which Republic had a deal for transmission began to encrypt the channel. Republic TV had signed carriage deals with a few private DTH players, including Dish TV, which owns bandwidth on GSAT15 satellite for retransmission of TV channels. Because GSAT15 is also used by DD FreeDish, Dish TV’s bandwidth is co-located with DD Free-Dish’s. This resulted in Dish TV users getting all free-to-air (FTA) channels available on FreeDish – without extra cost.