Trial by Media and the Sting Operation

In one line

Media coverage can defeat a fair trial and can also be the only means of exposing the subversion of one, and Indian law has had to permit the second while restraining the first.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: trial by media is publication that assumes or asserts guilt before adjudication, and it engages the accused's article 21 right to a fair trial and the law of contempt; a sting operation conducted in good faith to expose the subversion of a criminal trial, and whose material is placed before the court, does not amount to contempt, as the Supreme Court held in R.K. Anand v. Registrar, Delhi High Court.

Trial by media

What it is. Publication of the accused's identity and photograph, of a confession said to have been made to the police, of the contents of a case diary, of interviews with witnesses, of reconstructions, and of assertions of guilt, before and during the trial.

Why it matters.

Witnesses. A witness who has read six days of coverage asserting a version cannot be said to be giving an independent account, and a witness whose statement has been broadcast is a witness who has been coached in public.

The presumption of innocence. Reduced to a formality where the accused's guilt has been established in public months before the charge.

The acquitted man. If he is acquitted after four years, the correction reaches nobody, and the harm to his employment, his family and his standing is permanent.

And the pressure on the court. A judge is not supposed to be affected, and asserting that he is not is different from establishing it.

The Indian remedies. Contempt, where the publication prejudices a pending proceeding; postponement orders, which a court may make where a real and substantial risk of prejudice exists and no less restrictive measure will do; the ordinary law of defamation; and, in respect of print, the Press Council, which is however barred by section 14(3) of its own Act from inquiring into a matter pending in court.

The tension. Every restraint on reporting a pending case is a restraint on reporting the administration of justice, which is a matter of legitimate public interest and in which openness is itself a safeguard.

The sting operation

What it is. The recording of conduct by a person who conceals his purpose, usually with a hidden camera, and usually while offering the target an opportunity to commit the conduct.

Why it matters to this paper. The offences in this module are committed in private between parties who both benefit and neither of whom will complain. A recording is the only evidence there can be, and every significant Indian exposure of privileged class deviance in recent decades has come from one: the cash for questions matter examined in the political deviance chapter, and the case below.