Confessions not in public domain cannot be published: Delhi high court

Justice Vibhu Bakhru gave another chance to the channel to file its affidavit disclosing the source of the statement that was broadcast on the channel.

The Delhi high court on Monday said that confessional/disclosure statements of an accused which are not in public domain cannot be accessed and published while hearing a plea filed by Jamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha, one of the persons arrested in conspiracy of the Delhi riots case, who had said that his disclosure statement was published by Zee News.

The court said that it does not think that a journalist has a right to take out the case diary and publish it and that the news report cannot be based on documents which are not in the public domain.(Mint)

The court said that the news channel had made a ‘mistake.’

Justice Vibhu Bakhru gave another chance to the channel to file its affidavit disclosing the source of the statement that was broadcast on the channel.“Prima facie, we find that a mistake has been made by you. Now in order to redress the people who are aggrieved, think of an appropriate redressal,” the judge said.

The court said that it does not think that a journalist has a right to take out the case diary and publish it and that the news report cannot be based on documents which are not in the public domain. “These are documents which you cannot take out and publish. There is no doubt about it,” the judge said.

In his petition, Tanha had alleged that police officials leaked his disclosure statement, recorded by the probe agency during the investigation, to the media.

During the hearing, the judge also declined an application by the channel, represented advocate Vijay Aggarwal, seeking to file the name of the source in a sealed cover.

Aggarwal requested the court to allow him to submit the affidavit in a sealed cover stating that it is for the comfort of the journalist who has reported the matter as she had asked not to disclose the name of her source as it would put him at risk. To this the judge said, “You are crossing the line here. There is no material to show this. Police has conducted high level enquiry and is taking action against its officials”.

Tanha’s counsel Siddharth Aggarwal told the court that such a thing would not have been possible without the contact between the journalist and the prosecution. He said that his client had not even signed the disclosure statement.

While the police has claimed that the disclosure statement was not leaked by any of its officials, the counsel for the news channel said the journalist has requested that he should not be pressed to disclose his source of information in view of the fact that the truthfulness of Tanha’s confessional statement has not been disputed by him in the petition.

The police had said that even they are aggrieved with the news report

HT contacted Sudhir Chaudhary, editor-in- chief of Zee news, for his response on the court’s observations but he was not available for a comment despite repeated calls and text messages.