Threat to free speech: Bengaluru courts lead the way in issuing gag orders on media
The News Minute’s two-part series ‘Under the Gavel’ explores two pressing issues related to Bengaluru’s legal landscape. This is Part 2 which examines the rise in judicial gag orders that curtail press freedom. Read Part 1 that discusses the complex legal battles faced by young men accused of statutory rape in consensual relationships.
What do Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajinikanth’s wife Latha Rajinikanth and a devotee of the famous Murugha mutt in Chitradurga have in common?
All of them secured gag orders against the media from courts in Bengaluru without giving journalists a chance to respond. Such orders, which are called ex-parte injunctions, are a growing trend in Bengaluru courts.
Ex-parte injunctions are stay orders given without hearing the other side, a one-sided gag. It would not be an exaggeration to say that a majority of these orders were passed in a jiffy. TNM has gone through court records of last ten years and found that there are more than 600 suits registered against media houses in Bengaluru courts. One legacy media organisation for example has zero suits against it in Chennai courts in the last three years, but has 199 in Bengaluru. Another legacy newspaper has 143 ex-parte injunction orders against it. This investigation delves into the trend set by a BJP politician, the absurd cases and how some ex-parte injunctions have ensured that even common people seeking justice through the media had to stop.
The numbers are quite telling. TNM looked at the suits filed in Bengaluru local courts in the last ten years against eight media houses including three English newspapers, two Kannada newspapers, one Kannada tabloid and two Kannada news channels.
From 2013 to 2016, it ranged anywhere between 8 to 20 suits a year. From 2017 to 2023, there’s been a surge, now ranging from 30 to 80 suits a year. The Deccan Herald had a total of 516 suits filed against it, while The Times Of India had 486 in the last decade.
The Deccan Herald newspaper’s legal team told TNM that since 2016 the paper has been hit with as many as 143 ex-parte interim injunction orders. Prajavani, the Kannada newspaper from the same media conglomerate -The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd- has got 135 ex-parte interim injunction orders in this time period.
Over the years, many of these cases have been withdrawn or disposed of, or certain publications have managed to get their names deleted. But legal teams of three newspapers TNM spoke to confirmed that the tendency to file such suits is high in Karnataka compared to other states as both politicians and people are confident of securing orders in their interest.
Former Supreme Court Judge, Justice Madan Lokur says an ex-parte injunction can impede the rights of a journalist. “Ex-parte injunctions should be an exception and not the rule. In matters of speech and expression, the court must be circumspect since an injunction restricts the exercise of a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. Journalists, unfortunately, are an easy target and in a case involving a journalist, the court must tread with caution since an injunction can impede the exercise of a journalist's profession, which too is a fundamental right.”
Easy cop-out for politicians
The trend among politicians was started by BJP MP and Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar back in 2017. He was the first politician who managed to get two published articles pulled down from the web. The articles which appeared on The Wire took a critical view of his career as a politician and a businessman with interests in the media and defence sectors. Importantly, it was an ex-parte injunction and The Wire wasn’t given a chance to explain their side. It took two years for a sessions court judge to finally dismiss the injunction order. The judge said that the article wasn’t defamatory and curtails the freedom of the press.
BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, before he even got elected for the first time in 2019, managed to secure an ex-parte injunction against 49 media outlets after a woman accused him of sexual harassment. The Karnataka High Court stepped in and set aside this restraint order, observing that voters have a right to know all information about candidates.
Since 2017, more than 20 politicians from the BJP including former Chief Minister Yediyurappa’s son BY Vijayendra have managed to secure interim injunctions. Eight of these cases happened between March and August 2021. Gokak MLA Ramesh Jarkiholi had to step down as Karnataka's Water Resource Minister in March 2021 after TV channels aired an unverified sex tape featuring him. That incident prompted six other ministers to hit up a civil court in Bengaluru saying there were reports that CDs featuring them could be released. The courts stepped in, ordering the media to steer clear of such unverified or defamatory content regarding these six politicians.
Fast forward to March 2023, and a civil court in Bengaluru restrained 46 media outlets from reporting any "defamatory opinion" against then BJP MLA Madal Virupakshappa and his son Prashanth Kumar. This happened right after the MLA’s son was caught red handed receiving Rs 40 lakh bribe. Lokayukta Chief Justice BS Patil had said that the bribe was meant for the MLA and the son was accepting it on his behalf.
The JD (S) and the Congress seem to be catching up. In 2023, JD (S) MLA Samruddhi Manjunath secured three ex-parte injunctions against media houses. JD (S) candidate C Govindaraj from Chamrajapet also obtained an injunction in August, while former JD(S) Kolar District Election In-Charge Belli Lokesh received one in March. Most of these orders are to restrain the media from publishing videos, audio clips or letters. Nine Congress leaders approached court in 2023 itself. MLA candidate Nagesh H obtained two gag orders, one against BJP leaders for spreading rumours against him during the pandemic, and another against Power TV for a sting over a land deal.
One media house reports, everyone gagged
While looking through the cases, we found a bunch of lawyers who had filed multiple such cases. “These lawyers have a list with them. The list has around 30-50 media houses and platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter (X). Whoever the client is, they just include all these media houses in the suit they file, no matter if they have reported the issue or not,” a lawyer said.
To understand if this trend is unique to Bengaluru, we looked at cases against The Hindu- which is headquartered in Chennai. The newspaper has no injunction suits against it in Chennai courts in 2023, it has more than 80 such cases in Bengaluru in 2023.
This is perhaps why Latha Rajinikanth, who resides in Chennai, secured a gag order from a Bengaluru court against 76 media publications in 2014 regarding a financial dispute between a company which had produced Tamil film Kochadaiyaan, starring Rajinikanth. The lower courts in Bengaluru rely upon a 1987 judgement of the Karnataka High Court (AK Subbaiah vs BN Garudachar), which said that harm should not be caused by one’s speech.
“Seeking an injunction, leave alone getting it, in this manner is illegal and unconstitutional. That courts are entertaining such pleas and awarding restraint orders in a large number of cases is shocking. Some lawyer must have obtained a random order initially and then converted it into a full fledged practice, now followed by many. But how can courts restrain dailies from publishing news? Law has a remedy, both civil and criminal, if the news is wrong or motivated. And restraint and gag orders are given against publications and individuals only if there are repeat offenders, and the petitioner lists them to make out a case that it was hurting his image, reputation and political prospects. Such orders can’t be given on the basis of apprehensions by private parties,” points out A Subramani, Senior Editor, Times of India.
As Subramani pointed out, there are people who have approached courts after media outlets published unverified news about them. For example, food safety inspectors who were promoted as Junior Health Assistants approached court after a news organisation claimed that their certificates were fake.
Everyone is turning to the court
It isn’t just politicians who are approaching courts and securing gag orders. People accused of crimes, corporate companies, co-operative banks, private individuals, government servants including police officers and bureaucrats have also sought similar orders. Court records, however, show that they are not as successful as politicians in securing gag orders.
Shivamurthy Muruga Sharanaru, the head pontiff of the famous Muruga mutt was accused by two minors of rape in August 2022. He was booked by the police and was subsequently jailed. But soon after, two people, claiming to be disciples of the seer, secured a gag order, arguing that their guru was being defamed. Again, the order was passed without giving media representatives a chance to respond.
“Two people claiming to be disciples and employees of the Mutt headed by the Seer filed a suit and obtained a blanket ban on reporting about him. The order also directed the media not to report on the case registered against the Seer. It even had reference to the Crime number and the FIR. The order didn’t make an exception for fair reporting on the case and FIR registered by the police. Such an order should’ve never been granted. To say not to publish anything baseless is acceptable. To say not to publish anything even about a case registered is direct impingement of our rights,” says Raghavendra Patil, Legal Counsel-Deccan Herald & Prajavani.
While in a few cases, the injunction request itself is absurd, in cases like the Muruga mutt, reporting is in public interest and is essential. Yet, media houses have been gagged from even reporting the facts of the case.
This gag which stopped media from publishing any news about the seer goes against the Karnataka High Court order in 2019 in the Tejasvi Surya case which had clearly said that outlets cannot be prevented from publishing news that isn’t defamatory. “The defendants (media outlets) are not prevented from publishing or telecasting any news item which is not defamatory in their opinion. In case the plaintiff (Tejasvi Surya) is aggrieved by any such publication or telecast of any news item he may approach the Election Commission of India."
The same pattern was followed by devotees of Veerendra Heggade, the hereditary administrator of Dharmasthala temple and a BJP Rajya Sabha MP after he was accused of shielding suspects in a major crime. We are not in a position to share details of the case, although a simple Google search throws up all the details, because in this case too a lower court hurriedly passed an ex-parte gag order. The ex-parte injunction also stopped the victim’s family from speaking to the media about Heggade.
“Injunctions, and the delays and restrictions they bring, effectively prevent us from doing our job to the fullest. Broad, non-specific gag orders are a real impediment to fair reportage,” points out Sitaraman Shankar, the editor of Deccan Herald and CEO of The Printers (Mysore).
In a recent case, a Bengaluru resident requested that media outlets be restrained from using the name ‘Kundapura’ while referring to Hindutva activist Chaitra Kundapura who was accused of defrauding a business. The court went ahead and temporarily restrained 25 media houses after the resident claimed that using the name, which also happens to be a town in coastal Karnataka, would amount to bringing disrepute to Kundapura.
A Bengaluru court in August issued an interim ex-parte injunction against the mother of 17-year-old PES university student who had died by suicide. The victim’s mother Asha had alleged that her son died after allegedly being subjected to verbal harassment from the college staff. The injunction was disposed of by a court in September.
Police officers and bureaucrats too have made a beeline to the courts seeking an injunction. In February, a civil court in Bengaluru passed an order restraining IPS officer D Roopa Moudgil and 59 media outlets from spreading ‘defamatory’ content about IAS officer Rohini Sindhuri. This decision followed a nasty public dispute between the two on social media. Previously, in 2015, the two officers had secured injunctions against media pertaining to an IAS officer's suicide.
It must be noted that the courts don’t grant ex-parte injunctions in all cases and do summon the media outlets for their responses in the rest. This puts enormous financial pressure on the media, particularly independent outlets, as a lawyer needs to be hired every time such a case is filed.
“Defamation and injunction suits filed usually lack merits and are mostly intended to intimidate and silence the media. The parties try to achieve this by burdening us with the cost of a legal defence. The issue or the individual involved is immaterial. This practice has now become a standard,” says Raghavendra Patil.
These injunctions appear to be nothing more than excuses to buy time, and to ensure that the media's interest in an issue wanes or they feel intimidated. In many cases, politicians have withdrawn cases after elections.
“This is the worst form of judicial excess throttling the very freedom of expression. No other state has this genius judicial practice. It’s high time the Karnataka HC wakes up to the illegality it has been perpetrating and puts an end to this,” says Subramani of Times of India.
Former Supreme Court Judge, Justice Madan Lokur points out that the basic principles of law regarding grant (or refusal) of an injunction is being forgotten. “It is imperative for a judge to be satisfied that the plaintiff has made out a prima facie case; the balance of convenience lies in favour of the prayer of the plaintiff being granted; irreparable harm or injury is likely to be caused to the plaintiff if injunction is refused. The courts must also take into consideration the proportionality of the relief sought. Finally, the court must pass a reasoned order and not merely record the principles in its order. An ex-parte injunction should not be granted for the asking. It should be an exception and not the rule.”