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LLM · Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration
2023 - Set 2 Examination
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LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Criminology 2023 - Set 2 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 13 August 2026.
Published by munotes.in, Mumbai.
Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2023 - Set 2 examination.
The law in these answers is stated as at August 2026, and four points date most textbooks on this subject. Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act survived a split verdict in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, 2026 INSC 55, in January 2026 and stands referred to a larger Bench, so it remains in force. The four to ten year punishment in section 13(2) was raised not by the 2018 amendment but by the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 on 16 January 2014. Union of India v. Ganpati Dealcom was recalled on 18 October 2024 and is not citable. And the Maharashtra Lokayukta Act, 2022, which covers the Chief Minister, had assent and was still not in force at the time of writing.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2023 - Set 2 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2023 - Set 2 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
SECTION I
Paper Subject Code 26917, printer's form 20135, footed Page 1 of 2 with its Marathi on Page 2 of 2, sat 16/01/2023. Attempt any FOUR questions, all questions carry equal marks
any four of seven · 100 Marks
1.Discuss the role of Press Council in curbing unprofessional and unethical journalism.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the most useful way to describe a regulator is to follow a complaint through it, because that shows what the body can actually do rather than what its statute says it may. Take a reader's complaint from the day it is posted to the day the finding is published, giving the section that governs each step; then the two abuses on which the machinery fails, paid news and trial by media, with what replaced it; then the three limits; and close on whether the Council should be given the powers it lacks, stating the case against as strongly as the case for.
The body the complaint arrives at
The Press Council of India is a statutory and quasi judicial body under the Press Council Act, 1978, and section 13(1) states its object as one compound purpose: to preserve the freedom of the Press and to maintain and improve the standards of newspapers and news agencies in India. The two halves pull against each other, and everything that follows is the Council choosing between them.
Its composition under section 5 decides how it chooses. A Chairman and twenty eight other members: the Chairman nominated by a committee of the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a member elected by the Council, by convention a retired judge of the Supreme Court; thirteen working journalists of whom six are editors; six representing owners and managers of big, medium and small newspapers; one from news agencies; three nominated by the University Grants Commission, the Bar Council of India and the Sahitya Akademi; and five Members of Parliament. It is a body of the profession, of its proprietors and of Parliament, and not of the executive.
Stage one: what the complaint may be about
The standard against which the complaint is judged is the Council's own, made under section 13(2)(b), which requires it to build a code of conduct for newspapers, news agencies and journalists in accordance with high professional standards. That code, the Norms of Journalistic Conduct, requires pre publication verification; accuracy and fairness, with comment kept separate from fact; a right of reply and a prompt, prominent correction; caution in reporting matters before the courts; identification of caste, community or religion only where strictly relevant; restraint on intrusion into private life except where a matter of public interest is involved; protection of the identity of victims of sexual offences; and conditions on the use of a sting, which is permissible only where the information cannot be obtained otherwise and is of overriding public interest, with the recording preserved intact.
A complaint that does not engage one of those norms goes nowhere, and that is the first filter: the Council enforces professional standards and not the law of defamation, which belongs to the courts.
Stage two: who may complain, and against whom
Under section 14 the Council acts on a complaint or on its own motion, and the respondent must be a newspaper, news agency, editor or working journalist. That is the second and much larger filter, and it is jurisdictional: a complaint about a television channel, a radio station or a digital news portal cannot be entertained at all, because the Act does not reach them.
A complainant is ordinarily required to have taken the matter up with the editor first, which is not a formality but the Council's preferred remedy: a correction printed by the newspaper itself repairs the harm faster than any adjudication.
Stage three: the inquiry
Section 14 requires the newspaper, news agency, editor or journalist to be given an opportunity of being heard, and section 15 supplies the machinery. Under section 15(1) the Council has the same powers as a civil court trying a suit in respect of summoning and enforcing attendance and examining on oath, requiring discovery and inspection of documents, receiving evidence on affidavit and requisitioning public records. Under section 15(3) every inquiry is a judicial proceeding within sections 193 and 228 of the Indian Penal Code, so a false statement made to the Council is perjury.
One power is expressly withheld and it is the most important thing in the Act. Under section 15(2) nothing in the Council's powers compels a newspaper, news agency, editor or journalist to disclose the source of any news or information. That is a stronger protection than a journalist enjoys before a court or a police officer, and it exists because the Council's first stated object is to preserve the freedom of the Press.
Stage four: the finding, and what it is worth
Under section 14 the Council may, for reasons recorded in writing, warn, admonish or censure the newspaper, news agency, editor or journalist, and may require the newspaper to publish particulars of the inquiry. That is the whole of its coercive power. It cannot fine. It cannot suspend publication. It cannot cancel a registration. It cannot award compensation to the person wronged.
The consequence is exact and it should be stated as the answer's central proposition: the Council is effective wherever publication of its finding is itself the remedy, and ineffective wherever money is at stake. On inaccuracy, failure to verify, refusal of a right of reply, communal insensitivity and intrusion into privacy, an order requiring the paper to print the finding does real work, because the asset in question is the newspaper's standing with its own readers. Against a practice that earns revenue, a printed rebuke is a cost of doing business.
Section 15(4) adds the other direction of the same power: the Council may make such observations as it thinks fit, in any of its decisions or reports, respecting the conduct of any authority including Government. It has used that to speak against the withholding of official advertising from critical papers and against police action on reporters, which is the part of its role that answers to the first half of section 13(1).
Where the machinery fails: paid news
Paid news, the sale of editorial space as news, is the gravest form of unprofessional journalism because it deceives the reader on the very matter the newspaper exists to inform him about, and it is worst at elections.
The Council investigated it and its own record is the best evidence against self regulation. A sub committee produced a report of some thirty six thousand words naming publications; on 30 July 2010 the Council adopted a version reduced to roughly a tenth of its length, from which the names had been removed. A body on which six of twenty eight members represent proprietors found it difficult to name proprietors.
The remedy came from election law instead. Since 2010 the Election Commission has operated Media Certification and Monitoring Committees at district and State level to identify paid news during an election and add its cost to the candidate's account of expenses. In Ashok Shankarrao Chavan v. Madhavrao Kinhalkar, (2014) 7 SCC 99, decided on 5 May 2014, a former Chief Minister challenged the Election Commission's jurisdiction to inquire into his return of election expenses on a paid news allegation. The Supreme Court held that the Commission has that jurisdiction and may disqualify a candidate under section 10A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 for failing to lodge a true and correct account. Paid news can therefore end a political career while remaining unpunishable as such.
Where the machinery fails: trial by media
Reporting that pronounces guilt, publishes confessions, reconstructs the offence and interviews witnesses before trial injures the accused and the process, and the Council can only censure it afterwards.
In Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd. v. Securities and Exchange Board of India, (2012) 10 SCC 603, decided on 11 September 2012, five judges supplied the remedy the Council could not. The question arose from the publication of a settlement proposal while proceedings were pending. The Court held that a court may, in an appropriate case, order the postponement of publication of proceedings for a limited period where there is a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the fairness of a trial; that such an order is a neutralising device and not a prior restraint, because it defers rather than forbids; and that it must be necessary, proportionate and a last resort, the applicant showing that no alternative measure would prevent the risk.
In R.K. Anand v. Registrar, Delhi High Court, (2009) 8 SCC 106, the courts dealt with the ethics of the sting itself. A television channel recorded a senior advocate and the special public prosecutor dealing with the sole eyewitness in the BMW hit and run trial. The Delhi High Court held that the sting was not itself contempt but that the conduct it exposed was, convicted both of criminal contempt and prohibited them from appearing before it and its subordinate courts for four months. On appeal the Supreme Court affirmed the finding of guilt against the senior advocate, held that punishment wholly inadequate and issued notice for its enhancement, while laying down how a court should treat a sting recording tendered before it. In State of Maharashtra v. Rajendra Jawanmal Gandhi, (1997) 8 SCC 386, the Court had already said that a trial by press, electronic media or public agitation is the very antithesis of the rule of law.
The three limits
Remedial: warn, admonish or censure, and nothing else. Jurisdictional: newspapers and news agencies only, so television, radio and digital news, where most Indian news is now consumed, lie outside the Act altogether. Compositional: six of twenty eight members represent the owners the Council must discipline.
Should it be given more?
The case for is simple: jurisdiction over all media, and a ladder of sanctions between censure and nothing, so that a publication which ignores an adjudication faces a consequence. Successive Chairmen have asked for both.
The case against is serious and an answer that omits it is not a discussion. A press regulator able to fine or suspend, in a country where governments are the largest advertisers and control access, is a dangerous instrument, and a captured regulator would do more harm to reporting than unregulated paid news does to readers. That reasoning is why the Supreme Court declined to enlarge the Council's role in Ajay Goswami v. Union of India, (2007) 1 SCC 143, decided on 12 December 2006, where a petitioner sought guidelines or an expert committee to protect minors from sexually explicit material in newspapers. The Court dismissed the petition, holding that the existing framework of the Council's norms and the law of obscenity was sufficient, that the balance between press freedom and the protection sought must be struck in favour of the freedom, and that a regime of prior scrutiny would fetter the independence of the press.
Conclusion. Followed from the day a complaint is posted, the Press Council is a body with a good code, real powers of investigation and a sanction consisting of words. Its role against unprofessional journalism is genuine where the currency is reputation, which covers inaccuracy, unfairness, communal insensitivity and intrusion, and it is close to nil where the currency is revenue, which is why its own paid news report was abridged before publication. What has actually curbed the two worst practices came from elsewhere: disqualification for an untrue expenditure return in Ashok Chavan, postponement orders in Sahara, and contempt in R.K. Anand. Whether the Council should be given those powers itself is a genuinely hard question, because Ajay Goswami is right that the alternative to a weak self regulator is not a perfect one.
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