media trial

 Innocent Until Proven Guilty ..


India is well known as a country where huge numbers of crimes are reported daily. The National capital Delhi is known as city of crimes. Crimes in the ancient times used to be performed out of hunger; crimes at that time were simple like Dacoits, robbery & theft.

As the time passed the hunger turned into heat of revenge, ego & anger and these things gave a rise to huge crimes like molestation, murder, kidnapping & many more. The punishments in the ancient times were minor limited to the fine , but as the crimes turned to major the Indian Judiciary System was in huge urge to make the laws the strict and also the punishment needed to be strict .

Indian Penal Code 1860 came into force where the punishments were divided according to the seriousness of the crime. As with time the crime changed, technologies also started developing, the media channels were kept at the most important role in the public awareness of the crimes.

Usually media plays the role of making people aware about the crimes, but now days its turning as a death route for innocent, where if a certain crime happens the media reach at a foot tip to the crime scene, which is ok as they need to update the people, but this shouldn’t kill the innocent, the role of the media is to keep people aware about various things happening around.

Indian Constitution came into existence in year 1960, to protect the people from various crimes; the constitution was divided as the in proper context like police, advocates, magistrate who fight for the justice.  The post crime procedure has to be done accordingly to prove whether the innocent is proven guilty or not.

 The most important role is played by the police officer, so it’s the prime duty of the investigation officer to not disclose the information of accused until the investigation is completed. Next step is to take the accused for the trials, so it is also necessary that the information of the accused not to be disclosed in the media until in the trials, the magistrate doesn’t declare the accused as proven guilty.

Today if we see the scenario , the public is so judging that before all the things are investigated or judged by the magistrate , the public just with a pin top of the news reporter , decide that the accused is guilty and go for the demands of various punishment.

 The matter of the fact is that the media should also have some ethics that the personal & sensitive information of anyone till the perfect evidence and declaration shouldn’t be disclosed in the public as our Indian Constitution has given certain rights to all life to live with dignity, so if the person is still an accused disclosing unsure information can harm the image of innocent in the eyes of society.

Our Legal education teaches us that the accused should be considered as innocent until he is proven as guilty in the eyes of law. Recently, honorable Delhi High  Court passed a landmark judgment; let’s take a brief description about the facts and observation.

 

On 27 July 2020, the Delhi high Court said that police cannot use media to influence public opinion to accept the accused as guilty.

The high court was dealing with the petition of the Pinjara Tod activist Devganga  Kalitha. Certain evidence was leaked by the police, wherein in such cases the information’s are not disclosed as the case was a sensitive matter.

The court said that the expression” Innocent until Proven Guilty “should be kept in the minds by police. The court also added that the Human Dignity is recognized as the constitutional right and maintain ones dignity is as important as it. A person shouldn’t be judged merely because he is an accused or is under trial.

The accused has be sought for setting aside all the allegations contained in press by note issued by the Delhi police.

The court further came to an conclusion disclosure of information to harm the reputation of the person under the opinion of public against the alleged opinion with use of electronic or other media while the investigation is in process or under trial is the complete violation of the law.

Facts of the case: The allegations made against the petitioner in the press were made merely on the charge sheet filed by the police, the court also found that media was not directly involved but the information was leaked by the Public Relation Officer among 400 media outlet.

So in short the police or media have no rights to announce the accused /innocent until he is proven guilty under the eyes of law.

Everyone has right to live with dignity , even the accused. Remember don't judge a book just by its cover, as it is old its useless, but it may be worth.