Smarting from sting, HC questions Govt on BIll

STUNG BY STING: Live India's sting operation was followed by a mass protest against the teacher.

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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has sought a status report on the Broadcast Bill from the Government.

The direction came on a public interest litigation that demanded regulation of sting operations. The PIL was filed after reports of the fake sting operation on a Delhi school teacher, Uma Khurana surfaced.

Hearing the case, the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, M K Sharma, asked the Additional Soliticor General to file a reply by next week.

A Division Bench comprising the Chief Justice and Justice Sanjeev Khanna directed the Government to inform it about the provisions for regulating sting operations in the Broadcasting Bill.

"There have been discussions regarding the bill. The Minister (Information and Broadcasting) has said that the government is bringing the bill. What has come out so far?" the Bench was quoted by news agency PTI.

"If the sting is concocted, its your responsibility to take action. Some kind of restriction has to be there. It is not about an individual case but about broader policy," the Bench was further quoted as saying.

With only a few days left for the current Parliament session to end, the government indicated it was unlikely to table the Broadcast Bill next week in the midst of a standoff with broadcasters on a content code to be developed by broadcasters for themselves.

While the first round of the fight between the I&B Ministry and the broadcasters over regulation of news and current affairs content on the Indian idiot box has gone to the broadcasters, the sting operation controversy has forced broadcasters to hurry with a self-regulation code.

The controversial Broadcast Bill, which was be tabled in the Monsoon Session of Parliament, was shelved for the time being amid protests from broadcasters.

At present, few news channels have clear guidelines on sting operations and those who pioneered stings have distanced themselves from the most recent sting gone wrong.

The Sting That Stank

Prakash Singh, a reporter with a private television channel, Live India, had posed as an artificial jewellery exporter after hearing of a Delhi school teacher, Uma Khurana’s interest in jewellery. He promised to help the teacher if she procured girls for him.

Khurana is a mathematics teacher of Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in central Delhi.

Delhi Police say that she refused on multiple occasions but finally relented when a acquaintance — Vijendra Kumar — sent a budding journalist Rashmi Singh who posed as a prostitute.

This led to Khurana’s entrapment. However, the sting operation was soon exposed as a fake, with the editor of Live India saying that he had been kept in the dark about the 'operation' by Prakash Singh.

Singh is currently in the custody of Delhi Police. He was arrested on Friday on charges of cheating, fabrication of evidence and criminal conspiracy after he allegedly tried to frame Uma Khurana.

Live India is the new name of Janmaat channel, promoted by Broadcast Initiatives Ltd of Markand Adhikari. Janmaat was a predominantly ‘views channel’ earlier till it re-launched itself and became a 24x7 news channel, on August 3.

Since then the channel has been focusing less on programmes and discussions and has stepped into live news, with a new tagline — Khabar Hamari Faisla Aapka (news ours, decision yours).