For a change, the action was outside the guest house where the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) team has been grilling Bollywood figures in a drugs case, as journalists scuffled over a vantage point and a slur. Police intervened in the fight between journalists of a national news channel – whose main anchor is known for his histrionics – and some Mumbai reporters, after they termed the local media as ‘chai biscuit wale partakar, an official said.

Videos of the incident, which took place at 10 am outside the Colaba guest house in south Mumbai where the NCB team is camping, have gone viral on social media. The NCB team is probing Bollywood’s alleged drugs nexus and is questioning some actors and other industry figures.

Every time a Bollywood figure comes in to record his or her statement, the journalists, mostly from TV channels, stand outside the guest house to get a ‘byte’ and such was the case on Thursday morning, before the scuffle ensued. The trigger was a Delhi-based TV journalist, who is in Mumbai to cover the NCB probe, coming “in the frame” of the camera of another national news channel.

After he was asked to shift a bit and go out of the frame, he began abusing Mumbai journalists, calling them “depression wale patrakar” and “chai biscuit khane wale garib partakar”, a police official said. This led to a heated argument and a scuffle in which some Mumbai-based journalists slapped the Delhi reporter, an eyewitness said.

Some police personnel, who were present at the spot intervened and dragged away the fighting media personnel who almost came to blows, he said..