The Sushant Singh Rajput case has brought out the vilest tabloid instincts of TV news anchors. Over the past month, we have seen them unleash a season of conspiracy theories on primetime news – from so-called murder angles to “kala jaadu” to, what else, but the presence of a “gang”. Just when you thought that the case being handed over to the CBI would compel these anchors to get back to issues like a RAGING PANDEMIC IN THE COUNTRY, FOR GOD’S SAKE, ECONOMY, JOB LOSSES, FLOODS — sorry the inner Arnab in us just took over the keyboard — things took a turn for the worse.

Republic TV anchors are busy heckling poor unsuspecting people in Rhea Chakraborty’s apartment complex.

Times Now is busy painting Rhea as some sort of a cross between Pablo Escobar and Charles Sobhraj — “Hau hai hau, she smoked weed!” The channel's news anchors have been telling us all week about “explosive exclusives” but it was sometime in the evening today that their exclusives truly exploded — in their face. More like an egg-shaped exclusive...ok, we digress.

Here’s what happened.

A Times Now anchor, in an attempt to “methodically” and “logically” bust “Rhea’s lie” presented one of her many “leaked chats”. It read: “Imma bounce.” The anchor then presented a “bounced cheque” that he claimed to have accessed and which was related to this “imma bounce” message.

So, not only did the anchor mistake the phrase “imma bounce” for a, umm, bounced cheque, he also sourced the said bounced cheque, which really makes us wonder about the quality of leaks and documents these guys have been accessing. Even if they walk into Times Now studio in Navika Kumar’s bag.

India Today, meanwhile, is all set to “grill” Rhea tonight and ask “the most vilified” woman in the country all the questions the nation has been wanting to ask her. We’re guessing no one will ask her who played a major role in her vilification.

It’s going to be a long weekend. We suggest you turn off your TV channels since you aren’t going to get any news from them. To catch up on all the nuisance, there’s TV Newsance anyway. This Saturday at 11 am, we’ll be back with our latest show on all the madness we witnessed this week. And it’s safe to say you have seen nothing yet.

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