19

Sep

Why is media trial such a hated term

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New Delhi, 19, September 2023

In an exclusive interview with Mediamap Kanth's speaks out about his objections with the court order.

Amitabh Srivastava

A lot of people, in fact a majority, would be delighted with the Supreme Court passing strictures  against the Home Ministry for media trials of important cases in the country.

A three member Bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice PS Narsimha and Justice Manoj Misra has asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to prepare guidelines on media briefings by the police within three months.

It also directed the Director General of Police(DGPs) of all states to submit their suggestions for the same. The National Human Rights Commission has also been asked for its impure in this issues that has been rattling the people at large with the kind of media trials we have wit seed in the last few years.

Whether it was the Aarushi case of of 2008 in NOIDA where the crew of a TV channel barged into the house of the Talwars destroying a lot of forensic evidence of the Jessica Lal murder case where the highest authorities of the capital including then Police Commissioner and well in won lawyers managed to create such a credibility crisis on the Police investigations that the Supreme Court was forced to release all the high profile accused till fresh investigations put them back into jail or the Nithari case where the FIR for a missing girl was not lodged by then SHO of Noida with the infamous comment 'Bhag Gayee hogi apne Yaar ke saath" created such fear among the complainants that they shut their mouth completely. Finally it took a bold Chief Minister Mayawati to suspend the then SSP that one of the worst crimes against children in the world was reopened and the culprits arrested.

However Amod K Kanth,one of the most decorated and respected Police Officers who tackled sensational cases like the Messica Lal case, Charles Sobhraj case, 1984 riots, transistor bomb cases, the Hawala case and the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case in his 30 year long tenure with the Police and the CBI has strong reservations with the Supreme Court order.

In an exclusive interview with Mediamap Kanth's speaks out about his objections with the court order.

"How does the Supreme Court assume that all the appears in the papers is based on police briefing. The media has its own sources and sometimes better than the Police.Let me begin with a case of the double death of a young couple both working for TV channels found dead in a car in the winters with the AC on. There were hundreds of news items in all newspapers alleging that this was a case of murder. I was DCP (Crime) at that time and I called a press conference and listed 50 points in the case to prove that this was an accident. The running AC in closed car had suffocated them. Every journalist went back convinced and that was the end of the matter" he says.

He always cites the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case he had investigated when talking of media.

"I was with the CBI and at night of May 1991 got a message that I had to process to Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu where the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated in a suicide bombing case. It was a hard core Tamil case and I had no knowledge either of the terrain or of the language. We had two hour drive from the airport to the spot. I asked my team to buy all the newspapers they could and prepare notes about whatever had been written. By the time I arrived in Sriperumbudur to address the media they were surprised that coming from Delhi I knew so much about the case. I frankly told them I got all the information from them. As Ja have mentioned many times in my autobiography Khaki on Broken Wings and Khaki and Khaki in Dust Storm the media is always ahead of the police because they are not totally dependent on the police briefing as the Court is assuming," he says.

He adds further,"This SC judgement is weird because it does not understand the source of the information with the police. Let me tell you there are two sources of information Overt and Covert with any investigating agency be it the IB, RAW or the CBI. We get our information from all sources Print, Electronic and Social media and even rumour why not. Information must be culled from all these and of course our informers and friends in the media to get to the truth."

Talking from his rich experience in various positions he wonders why the Supreme Court order talks about the New York Police and not Delhi Police,

He says he has travelled all over the globe go counties like UK, France, Japan seen the working of the FBI and asserts that Indian Police is much ahead in its investigations and "many of our laws are much better than theirs."

Having faced media trial all his life Kanth asserts that the kind of guidelines being suggested by the Supreme Court are meaningless and unnecessary.

"If they have to issue any guidelines they should set guidelines for the investigating agencies for media briefings. Why is the ED bringing media everyday, or the IB or the Narcotics Bureau. They should be told that these national investigating agencies should brief the media only at the Headquarters in Delhi" he suggests.

With all his experience he says it's the CBI which has the best media relations because they have an Information Officer from the Indian Information Service who is not from the CBI.

"I would strongly recommend that the press briefings of the National Investigating Agencies like IB,ED, Narcotics Bureau and the NIA should be organised by the PIB, instead of doing spot briefings which later turn out to be ludicrous" Kanth adds.

The well known Police Officer who also runs an NGO for children and women for the last 34 years, rues that in the absence of such control a media trail vitiates and compromises the justice as it is an unfair trial of the accused, the victim and most of the time of the investigating officer.

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