When the media plays judge
A well connected Indian catholic bishop arrested for rape, police officers arrested for custodial death, senior politicians caught taking money under the table.
All were caught, thanks to an increasingly aggressive Indian print and broadcast media which is trying to fill some of the gaps left by an overburdened justice system and a corrupt police force.
" Where institutions fail, civil society has to step in." I wholly support the campaigns run by the media to get justice for those who have been denied.
The repeated media attention has really helped to bring to the notice of the courts, even though the proceedings were slow because of the backlog of cases.
However, there is a possible risk that such populist media can sometime misfire.
And with more than a dozen national television news channel in India, competition for ratings is fiercer than ever.
The media intervention without the serious research can be dangerous. There is a paucity of evidence in such interventions.
A sustained media campaign helped get justice for Prabhavathy Amma whose son Udaya Kumar was tortured to death by few police officers at the fort police station, Trivandrum in 2005.
And after 13 years, A special court of the CBI in Trivandrum, sentenced 2 policemen for Capital Punishment for torturing Udaya Kumar.
Prabhavathy Amma thanked the media for the outpouring of social support their coverage of the case had triggered.
Some famous criminal cases that would have gone unpunished but for the intervention of media are Priyadarshini Mattoo case, Jessica Lal case, Nitish Katara murder case and Bijal Joshi rape case.
The media however drew criticism in the reporting of murder of Aarushi Talwar, when it preempted the court and reported that her own father Dr. Rajesh Talwar, and possibly her mother Nupur Talwar were involved in her murder.
The trial by media is definitely an undue interference in the process of justice delivery.
Media has now reincarnated itself into a ‘public court’ (Janata Adalat) and has started interfering into court proceedings. It completely overlooks the vital gap between an accused and a convict keeping at stake the golden principles of ‘presumption of innocence until proven guilty’ and ‘guilt beyond reasonable doubt’.
A social media stream does have an important role in our community. Providing a platform to report from the people over the years in uprisings, natural disasters, terrorist events, social media is where this news breaks more often.
As it is however with many such platforms with the positives there is also the negatives of the stream.
Personally, I don't have an issue with this up until such opinion is reported as news and more importantly as fact.
There are several instances when media took up the cases with sweeping declarations of guilt, shattering lives without waiting for the legal system. Accusations and headlines have become surrogates for facts and presumption of guilt to the point where reputations can be ruined beyond repair.
One such incident goes back to 2016, Sarvjeet Singh, now known as a harasser, thanks to a false case filed by a Delhi college student Jasleen Kaur, opened up about how tough and embarrassing life has been since the incident that happened 2 years ago.
On August 23rd of 2016, Jasleen Kaur, a student of Delhi's St Stephens College, posted a photo of a man on her Facebook profile, accusing the man of passing obscene comments at her and threatening her as she pulled out her phone to click his photo. Kaur wrote in her post that Singh said, "Jo kar sakti hai kar le. Complaint karke dikha, fir dekhiyo kya karta hun main".
Kaur's post went viral within hours and Singh was easily traced by the police and was arrested. Before he got arrested, however, Singh commented on Jasleen's post introducing himself as the man Jasleen is talking about, saying, "I was at the red light near Aggarwal Sweets at Tilak Nagar from where I had to take a left turn. Ms Jasleen stopped me and others saying they're helping control the traffic, and I said I am not jumping the red light, left turn is free, and if you want to jump the signal, it's your wish. The next thing I see is she pulling out her phone and clicking photos of my bike and me and screaming "I'll go to the cops tomorrow, you will know when they arrest you from your house"". He also wrote, "I know girls encounter eve teasing a lot, but that doesn't mean you can make false allegations about anyone."
But his appeal fell on deaf ears. Media was quick to make judgements and tag him as "pervert" and "harasser".
Meanwhile, Jasleen shot to instant fame for standing up to a harasser.
In just a day, things started taking a U-turn when the police questioned, Vishwajeet Singh, an eyewitness. He vouched for the innocence of Sarvjeet in the matter and confirmed that it was Jasleen who verbally abused and misbehaved with the man. Social media users switched sides, actor Sonakshi Sinha, who initially supported Kaur, apologised to Sarvjeet and Delhi CM Kejriwal was called out for praising the girl before even a primary investigation about the case was completed.
Sarvjeet Singh, having the case registered against him, lost many job opportunities, and cannot even travel out of the city without informing the police. Thanks to the viral Facebook post and media coverage, millions now recognise him as a harasser, not everyone knows what the witness Vishwajeet Singh testified. He cannot explain the truth to everyone he meets either.
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• For modern pundits, "presumed guilty" has more entertainment value than "presumed innocent".
Rohtak Sister Case
In November 2014, a video surfaced on social media showing 2 sisters beating 3 young men with a belt, alleging harassment by the men.
The girls were praised by the media and given the nickname ' Bravehearts' while boys were declared 'perverts' and ' molestors'.
Anyone speaking for the boys or listening to the boys's side was declared rape apologists and misgynists and were silenced.
However after a second video emerged within a few days, which showed them kicking another boy, the opinions began to shift.
Later 6 women claiming to be the passengers on the bus testified to the police. They said it was not an issue of harassment, but of a dispute over seats. The reality was that the boys wanted to give the seat meant for the elderly to an old woman, but it was occupied by the sisters, when asked to vacate, the girls started beating the boys. On 8th December 2014 the girls were subjected to a Narcoanalysis test to prove their version of the story of event was true but the girls failed at the polygraph test and the accused boys passed it.
In March 2017, the court dismissed the charges against the boys observing that the statement of the girls were false as they lied about eveteasing and molestation.
Now 4 years after the case, the lives of the 3 boys and their families have been ruined. They lost their job opportunities, 2 of them had cleared army exams but were rejected after they were dragged into this fake molestation case. Now all that the 3 boys want is an apology from the mainstream media which had demonized them. "We have been jobless, trying to make ends meet by working on our farms. If media had not blown this so much out of proportion, we would have been employed for 4 years now", one of the boy says, "Media rushed to declare us guilty even when we were innocent but now when we have been declared innocent by law, no one wants to discuss our plight", he added.
Three more lives ruined by the one sided reporting of the media.
Who will return their dignity and the precious years of their lives that they lost?
These incidents are a classic case of witch-hunt by the media which fell upon the accused boys at the time of false allegations, purpotedly.
To explain the behaviour of the police and the media, read this extract from a law commission of India report titled "Trial by Media", published in August 2006: "The pressure on the police from media day by day builds up and reaches a stage where police feel compelled to say something or the other in public to protect their reputation. Sometimes when, under such pressure, police come forward with a story that they have nabbed a suspect and that he has confessed, the 'Breaking News' item starts and few in the media appear to know that under the law, confession to police is not admissible in a criminal trial. Once the confession is published by both the police and the media, the suspect's future is finished. When he retracts from the confession before the magistrate, the public imagine that the person is a liar. The whole procedure of due process is this getting distorted and confused."
The verdict
Be a responsible citizen. In sensational cases that make news, never trust everything the police or the media pronounced. And leave any judging to the learner judges.
http://www.lawabidingcitizen.in/2018/10/when-media-plays-judge.html
