Media Laws

Mr. Satya Prakash in his lecture on 11 September discussed cases of the Contempt of Court. He began by giving the example of the ‘Wah India’ case where Madhu Trehan, Contributing writer in Indian Express had published a survey on Delhi High Court judges.

The results of the survey apparently casted aspersions on the image of the judges and lowered their integrity. The High Court then issued a case of contempt of court against Indian Express for publishing malicious content without any evidence. This led Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief Indian Express and Madhu Trehan to render an unconditional apology to the Court.

Highlighting another case of Contempt of court in Gujarat, Mr Prakash gave the example of a sting operation by Zee News. In this case Zee News paid bribes to senior advocate Harish Salve to issue warrants against the then Chief Justice V.N.Khare.

Mr. Prakash further highlighted that the Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Court Act 1971 states that publication of any matter, whether in the form of spoken or written words or signs or visible representation or any form that scandalises or tends to scandalise or lowers or tends to lower the authority of any Court leads to Contempt of Court.