of which RIL is the sole beneficiary, for acquisition of control in Network 18 and its subsidiaries. Subsequently, on 1 July 2014, Sardesai, editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, along with the entire founding team — editorial and managerial — resigned from the Network18 group. Personal life He is married to journalist and author Sagarika Ghose. Sardesai and Ghose have two children, son Ishan, and daughter Tarini. Controversy On 30 September 2014, Sardesai was allegedly heckled by a group of Indians in the Madison Square of New York, however, the person representing the group denied these allegations and claimed that Rajdeep "begun the physical assault". Sardesai and others were acquitted of defamation by a Hyderabad court in November 2019 after issuing an unconditional apology to IPS officer Rajiv Trivedi for false reporting on his role in the death of Sohrabuddin Sheikh. In January 2021, Sardesai was taken off TV for two weeks by India Today while also cutting his monthly salary for alleging in a retracted tweet that Navreet Singh was killed in a police shooting during 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest. Delhi Police claimed that his tweet on the cause of death was not accurate and referred to the CCTV footage of the incident of Singh's death. Later, Sardesai was booked for sedition over the Republic Day violence and the FIR stated that they shared misinformed news and ‘instigated violence’ on 26 January. Several journalists and politicians who reported about the 2021 Farmers' Republic Day parade were charged with sedition by the Delhi police and 5 state police in the BJP-ruled states. Siddharth Varadarajan called the police FIRs "malicious prosecution". Press Club of India (PCI), the Editors’ Guild of India, the Press Association, the Indian Women's Press Corps (IWPC), the Delhi Union of Journalists and the Indian Journalists Union in a joint press conference asked the sedition law to be scrapped. Editors Guild of India spoke against invoking of the sedition charge on journalists. The guild termed the FIRs as an "attempt to intimidate, harass, browbeat and stifle the media". Awards The Padma Shri, awarded by the Govt of India, in 2008 The International Broadcasters award for coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots and the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism award for 2006 In ENBA award 2020 Rajdeep Sardesai received lifetime achievement award. Books 2019: How Modi Won India 2019 Modi Ki Jeet Newsman: Tracking India in the Modi Era, published by Rupa