New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday gave two months to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to prepare a fresh comprehensive manual on media briefings by police personnel.
A three-judge bench led by chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, which was hearing a 2008 public interest litigation, filed by civil society group the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) to have a set of guidelines for the police on media briefing. The court was informed the existing set of guidelines are more than a decade old.
The court said that the new guidelines should be finalised keeping in mind the upsurge in reporting on crimes not only in the print media, but the electronic and social media platforms and should strike a balance between the citizens right to know and the accused right to fair trial.
Media trials, court said, are liable to result in a deflection of the course of justice by impacting upon the evidence which would be adduced and its assessment by the adjudicating authorities. It not only impinges the rights of the accused, but the victim as well, it said.
The court, however, clarified the guidelines would be confined to the pre-trial stage when the investigation has been initiated and is continuing.
“At the stage of investigation, every accused is entitled to the presumption of innocence and hence media reportage in a manner which implicates the culpability of a person who is under investigation, is liable to seriously impinge upon the reputation and personal dignity of the individual under investigation,” the court said.
The court directed all state Director Generals of Police (DGPs) to submit their suggestions within a month to the MHA, which shall consider them before framing the appropriate guidelines.
Suggestions given by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) too shall be taken into account, the court said in its order. On its part, the bench too indicated the broad contours for the guidelines and asked the MHA to weigh in its suggestions.
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‘Biased reporting also gives rise to public suspicions of guilt’
Acting on the same PIL, the top court had in 2014 laid down a set of procedures to be followed in the investigation of deaths following police encounters. A set of 16 guidelines included preserving a piece of evidence, registering an FIR without any delay, video graphing the post-mortem, independent investigation, conducting a magisterial enquiry and ensuring an expeditious trial.
The court then continued to hear the matter on the aspect of media briefing by the police during an ongoing investigation and had appointed senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan as an amicus curiae to assist the court.
In order to get information from states and union territories, Sankaranarayanan circulated a questionnaire to them. Seven states — Bihar, Goa, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand and the administrations of Andaman and Nicobar, Chandigarh and Puducherry — responded to the questionnaire.
On Wednesday, Sankaranarayanan argued in court that any disclosure by the police about an investigation must be cognizant of the fact that any information as disclosed impacts not only upon the victim of the crime and the accused, but on the rule of law. He recalled SC’s 2012 decision in the Sahara India vs SEBI, where the need to maintain a balance between the right of an accused and the right of media and public to be informed was underscored.
The senior counsel maintained that while the media cannot be restrained from reporting, sources of information, which are often government entities, can be regulated. This, he added, would prevent multiple versions of a case from getting reported in the media.
Sankaranarayanan gave the example of the Aarushi murder case to press his point.
“Biased reporting also gives rise to public suspicions that the person under investigation has in fact committed an offence which is yet to be investigated and if a chargesheet is submitted to be subjected to the administration of criminal justice in abundance with law,” the court observed.
The bench admitted that disclosure of an official version of the investigation would ensure there is no speculation in crime reporting but it could do disservice to the accused, prospective witnesses as well as victims and survivors.
Therefore, the court advocated the need for a uniform policy to be adopted by the police. This could include notifying nodal officers, who would be available to share the official version of the investigation. This would be consistent with the need to ensure the investigation in a case is not derailed, the court said.
However, the court also observed that the nature of the disclosure cannot be uniform since it must depend upon the nature of the crime, the participating stakeholders, including the victims, witnesses and the accused themselves. Their age and gender would have a significant bearing on the nature of disclosure as well, the bench said.
Hence, the court added the guidelines must “duly factor in the need to ensure that the disclosure must not result in a media trial so as to allow for the pre-judging of the guilt of the accused.”
Balancing ‘right to inform’ and right to ‘fair investigation’
The bench also accepted the fact that both media, in pursuance of its fundamental right to free speech and expression, and consumers, in pursuance to their right to know, have the right to receive fair and unbiased information.
Criminal offences and investigation into them by the law enforcement machinery involves significant elements of public interest bearing on the right to inform as well as the right to be informed, the court held.
But at the same time, the court added, competing interests are of immense significance and the accused, whose conduct is under investigation, is entitled to a fair and unbiased investigation by the police, the bench said.
“Thus, while a disclosure by the media of relevant details involves public interest associated with the fundamental right under article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression), equally, rights of the accused and of the victims or as the case maybe survivors of the crime have a direct bearing on the fundamental right to life and personal liberty which is protected by Article 21 (freedom to live with dignity),” the court said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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