“Can the media act as an appellate authority over what is stated in the chargesheet?” Justice Mukta Gupta of the Delhi High Court asked on September 10 while hearing Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s plea seeking an injunction against Arnab Goswami’s Republic Network broadcasting details of the Sunanda Pushkar death case. While emphasising that it was not a gag order, the Delhi HC also asked how Goswami can hold a ‘parallel inquiry and trial’ in the case.
But we continue to witness discordant media trials, including the Sushanth Singh Rajput death case being played across news channels. Instead of attempting to be a facilitator of justice or the voice of the underdog, several news organisations have gotten carried away and are running a public trial, often with a hotchpotch of evidence and a lot of sensationalism.
Sure, there have been many positive outcomes of media playing watchdog in India. There have been instances where the media had a constructive role in awakening the collective conscience of the society and also ensuring that the government of the day and the agencies under it feel the pressure to do right by those who have been denied justice. Examples like the Jessica Lal case, Priyadarshini Matoo case can be used to bolster this theory. But can that premise be used to breach privacy of private citizens or even interfere or hinder the work of the investigative agencies in other cases?
TNM looks at a list of the much-publicised media trials over the past years where the media has gotten their target wrong, where the ones they held guilty in the media's kangaroo courts have been acquitted.
In 2007, India Live TV ran a sting operation claiming that Uma Khurana, a teacher in a Delhi school was running a sex racket of students. An angry mob descended on the school and attacked the teacher, even ripping her clothes. It was later proved that the sting was fake and the court also agreed. Though Uma Khurana filed for defamation, she dropped the case after making an out of court settlement with the channel.
On October 20, 1994 the Kerala police arrested a Maldivian woman named Mariam Rasheeda on charges of over staying in India after her visa expired. Soon, the visa case metamorphosed into the biggest sex-spy scandal of the country, implicating two senior ISRO scientists, two businessmen and two women. The scientists and businessmen were accused of selling India's cryogenic secrets to the women who were acting as spies for Russia, ISI and others.
ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan was falsely accused of selling vital state secrets of the ISRO consisting of test data from rocket and satellite launches to Pakistan.
The police fed the media conspiracy theories about India’s space technology being smuggled out by a network of scientists like Narayanan and spies like Mariam Rasheeda and Fauzia Hassan. No one bothered to verify the intelligence handouts, Kerala newspapers lapped up the story by adding sensational information on the two women.
A few years later the CBI found that the entire case was cooked up.
The marriage of Hadiya, formerly known as Akhila Ashoka, to Shafin Jehan made national headlines for all the wrong reasons. In February, 2016, Hadiya's father Asokan filed a complaint that his daughter is missing and later filed a habeas corpus petition in the Kerala High Court.
Despite Hadiya’s insistence that she had wilfully converted to Islam and then married Shafin, her parents alleged that their daughter was brainwashed to do so. It soon became a case of alleged ‘love jihad’ and even the Kerala HC annulled the marriage. Four criminal cases against Shafin and Hadiya were sent back to her parents’ house.
Shafin approached the Supreme Court and the NIA was tasked with probing charges of love jihad. On 8 March 2018, the marriage was restored by the Supreme Court.
From the time allegations of ‘love jihad’ were made by Hadiya's family, the media-both regional and national-covered it with frenzy. Details of her life became public at every step with several sections of society claiming the right to 'protect' from her 'own follies' and the media happily gave them all a platform.
A student in Delhi, Jasleen Kaur, had accused 28-year-old Saravjeet Singh of sexually harassing her in August 2015. On her Facebook page, she had posted one photograph of Sarabjeet at the Tilak Nagar traffic signal in West Delhi and had written about how he allegedly harassed her. The case had become a rallying point for women’s safety and even the Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal had lauded the young girl's ‘bravery’.
Many news channels had hounded Sarabjeet thereafter, shaming him publicly for days despite his denial of the charges levelled against him. He was arrested by the Delhi police too.
In October 2019, almost four years later, he was acquitted of all charges by a Delhi court. While Jasleen had moved to Canada to pursue her career, Saravjeet had faced many hurdles that impacted his personal life and career too.
In November 2014, a viral video of two sisters from Rohtak beating three boys with a belt, who had allegedly harassed them, went viral. The Rohtak sisters were applauded as heroes and the boys were shamed on national TV. Soon, another video of them kicking young boys surfaced after which many people came forward claiming harassment by the two sisters. Many young women too gave their testimony of how they had witnessed the two sisters assault young men for no fault of theirs.
In 2015, IAS officer from Karnataka, DK Ravi was found dead at his Begaluru residence. Ravi had a reputation of being an upright officer and theories of pressure from ‘corrupt’ politicians being the reason of his death starting gaining steam. As the case made national headlines and campaigns were run demanding justice for DK Ravi, public sentiment too was whipped and many protests were seen across the state.
Accusations were levelled against the then Home Minister KJ George alleging his role in the death and in a cover-up. Several leaders in the then Congress government were accused by the media of harassing the IAS officer. The then commissioner of police was accused of being part of the cover-up too. But in November 2016, the CBI filed its report saying DK Ravi took his own life for personal reasons and had been in love with a married officer.
In 2017, KJ George filed a criminal defamation complaint against Arnab Goswami, the former Editor-in-Chief of Times Now, and against Times Now.
Until 13 August, 2017, Kafeel Khan worked as the nodal officer in charge of the encephalitis ward. After the death of 60 children in government-run BRD Medical College hospital in Gorakhpur, he was arrested on September 2, 2017 on charges of criminal breach of trust by public servant, criminal conspiracy, fraud, Prevention of Corruption Act etc. The move was largely condemned and it later was reported that Khan had actually spent his own money to buy oxygen cylinders to save the lives of children. On 27 September 2019, Khan was acquitted of all charges that were levelled against him with regard to the death of children in BRD Hospital.
But Khan’s trauma did not end there, he was rearrested by UP police from Mumbai on 13 December 2019 and this time, he was charged under the National Security Act. This was in regard to a speech he had made at the Aligarh Muslim University during an anti-CAA protest. The UP police claimed that his speech "sowed the seeds of discord and disharmony". On September 1, 2020, he was acquitted of these charges too and was released from the Mathura Jail where he was lodged for over seven months.
For over three years, Kafeel Khan had been painted as a villain, ‘anti-national’ by many media outlets, the repercussion of which was not just on his career and life but even on that of his family.
In August, 2012, Muthi-ur-Rehman Siddiqui, a journalist working in an English newspaper was arrested with six others on terror charges. The Karnataka police alleged that they were planning to target high-profile politicians belonging to the BJP and other right wing organisations and a few journalists as well.
Six months later, in February, 2013, Siddiqui was acquitted by the NIA court where he was absolved of all charges. In the meantime, he and his family were branded terrorists by sections of the regional media.
In 2008, a double murder in Noida made national headlines. 13-year old Aarushi Talwar and the male live-in domestic help Hemraj were found murdered on 16 May, 2008. Aarushi’s parents, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, were the initial suspects, with multiple theories being floated as their motive.
They were subsequently arrested after the police claimed that either Rajesh found Aarushi and Hemraj in an objectionable position and thus murdered them in rage or that they found out about an extramarital affair he had and thus silenced them. The media lapped up all the theories planted by the police, even if they contradicted each other,
The case was then transferred to the CBI and three other suspects were arrested, an assistant of Rajesh and two of his alleged accomplices. They too were released after the court found the evidence flimsy. Another CBI team took over the case and charged the Talwars and in November 2013, they were sentenced to life imprisonment. But after their appeal, in 2017, they were acquitted of all charges.
For a decade, the media branded the parents as murders and sensationalised the case with many wild theories and blatant character assasination being passed off as news.