Ahmedabad: Supreme Court judge Justice Uday U Lalit said on Saturday, Media must self-regulate when covering any kind of criminal trial.

Justice P D Memorial Lecture Series was speaking on the topic of whether media reporting has become a hassle to conduct a trial. Justice Lalit said that law does not prohibit media coverage for an ongoing investigation.

“In this country, we consider the rights of the press to be of such level, eminence, that we do not want to curtail them. No statute can curtail them. That does not mean there is complete lawlessness. There is self-regulation which the press must have,” he said.

Justice Lalit said that the responsibility of media is to not to disclose the identity of a vulnerable victim or witness since revealing it can “tremendously affect” the outcome of a trial.

He also said that the media should not disclose the line of investigation as such an action can help the accused instead.

At the investigative stage, he said that the media cannot be liable for contempt of court under the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 due to the fact that the offense can happen only after the charge sheet is filed into the court.

Justice Lalit said that a Law Commission report suggested that the starting point of the offense (for contempt of court) should be the detention of an accused person and that has not been approved.

“As judges, are we not trained sufficiently enough, are we not strong enough to take care of any criticism, any opinion, anything which is stated in the media?” he asked the gathering of judges and lawyers.

A proposal being considered by the Supreme Court to begin televised court proceedings is aimed at ensuring transparency and to safeguard the accused’s rights further.

“When you say a man should be tried in an open court… there will be sufficient safeguard for him with members of public overseeing,” Justice Lalit said.

He said that Courts can easily deal with any kind of report that is obviously motivated and colored. “The superior court still has the inherent right to direct gagging of media,” Justice Lalit said, adding that this kind of power was derived by Indian courts from the Canadian jurisprudence.

As the media plays an important role in the reporting of criminal cases mainly regarding the crimes that are of public interest, there is a need to set a trend in this regard in such a way that media behaves in a responsible way.

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