Media coverage of criminal cases: India
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Media coverage of criminal cases: India
HC proposals for cop-media interaction
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
From the archives of The Times of India 2007, 2009
2010-02
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday suggested to Delhi Police that they should consider holding back from the media the confessional statement of an accused before filing of the chargesheet in a criminal case.
Directing the police to amend its draft guidelines over police-media interaction, a Division Bench of Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw zeroed in on a few guidelines and asked the police to ‘‘consider’’ these. For instance, the police should desist from parading accused persons before the media soon after their arrest.
The Bench also asked the police to restrain from giving any opinion about the accused person as to whether he or she was guilty of offence or not. Filing the draft guidelines earlier, Y S Dadwal, Delhi Police Commissioner, had argued investigators should not divulge the modus operandi of major operations to newspersons while attempting to nab criminals and terrorists.
‘‘When major operations are launched to nab criminals, terrorists, the modus operandi of such operations should not be divulged to the media,’’ the guidelines say. They also propose that the media should not release the names of suspects until his arrest or express any opinion over the merit of the case.