Demand for ban on media trials of innocent on mere allegations

Our laws recognizes the rights of privacy of victims but no one cares about the rights of privacy of alleged accused. 'Alleged' is an important keyword here because of the strong rise in false accusations and misuse of legal procedures for ulterior motives and personal vendetta. And nobody owns up to the misuse of laws and measures to prevent it.

Through this post, I would like to advocate for the complete ban on media in publishing any personally identifiable information (PII) of either the victim or accused until the trial finishes in the court. If the media finds any case of huge public interest, they must seek permission from the judge to publish any PII information. This is because a huge damage to the extent of complete destruction of life and career of a person happens if the person is falsely accused. For making the allegations, no evidences are required and most often, the police will register FIR based on mere statements of a person. The evidences and the truth is a matter of trial and until the trial finishes, the truth cannot come out. And a media cannot publish any false information to mislead public and do irreparable damage to the falsely accused person.

I would like to take the example of the Lion of Delhi, the great Sardar Warrior, Sh. Sarabjit Singh Ji. He had some argument over stopping bike on zebra line with a girl who was assisting traffic police as a volunteer. The girl abused and threatened him out of nowhere for traffic violation and he argued back to mind her own business as he did not know she was authorized by traffic police. This simple argument resulted in girl accusing him of molestation, stalking etc. and even though many people who were eye-witness turned up in favor of Sh. Sarabjit Singh Ji, yet the media portrayed him as 'Delhi ka darinda' and even Chief minister of Delhi said that males are always at fault. Any ordinary person would have killed himself because of the harassment in police and court and the time he had to spend in jail. He even lost his job and friends. It took him 3+ years to prove his innocence in court while the girl never visited the court even once, so bad are our Indian laws. And no media reported when he got acquitted. Media cannot play the role of judge or try to bias the judges. We have seen same things in case of trial of Tarun Tejpal, in case of Raj kundra where media tries to sensationalize and influence the judiciary.

Another example is of Visakha guidelines which were created after Nirbhaya incident. Nirbhaya was an extreme example and existing laws for rape and murder were sufficient to convict the accused. Yet the biased advocates and feminists lobby influenced the lawmakers through clever use of media and ended up amending rape laws which leads themselves to high degree of misuse by lowering the standard of proof required. I call it as a propaganda to generate more business for advocates and to harass the innocent people to settle scores. 

Thank you.

Updates:

1. On Jul 29, 2021

I came across this defamation suit by Shilpa Shetty. Obviously, she is upset that media is portraying her in bad light and writing malicious, defamatory articles with intention of sensationalization to increase viewership. Is this the defamation suit? Obviously not. Although the case is filed just today, I am pretty confident that Ms Shetty has burnt her money by filing a defamation suit. You cannot blame advocates as they will say that they work on instruction of client and refrain from passing any judgment on whether the person will lose or win. And Ms Shetty herself does not have enough knowledge of law to understand that court won't pass any favorable order unless she make appropriate prayers. The appropriate prayer in this instance is to invoke "right to privacy" under Art 21 and pray for not publishing any PII information of either respondent/accused or petitioner/complainant in any case until the trial ends unless there's exceptional, significant public interest involved and in those cases, media houses representative should get permission from court for publishing of private information of an individual.

News link: https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/shilpa-shetty-files-defamation-suit-before-bombay-high-court-against-media-178434