“If you don’t prosecute when a crime has happened, you can’t claim to be robust” Justice Lokur to media bodies

The Supreme Court has sought a response from media regulatory bodies as to why they have not taken any steps to inform the police about violations of law committed by media organizations while covering matters concerning sexual offences..The Bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta has sought a response from the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA), Press Council of India (PCI), Editor’s Guild of India and the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF)..The Bench passed this order while hearing the case of Nivedita Jha v. State of Bihar..The Court asked the PCI why it had not taken any action against those publications which had committed criminal offences, and why no prosecution was initiated against them..“This is like a velvet fist in a velvet glove… It’s of no use”, Justice Lokur remarked..On perusing the affidavit filed by the NBSA, the Court noted it too had not initiated any prosecution against a single offender..“There is a law which says that a person has to be prosecuted when there is a violation of law. You have not prosecuted a single person”, Justice Lokur said..The counsel appearing for NBSA told the Court that the body deals with complaints in a robust manner, adding that there exists a two-tier process for dealing with complaints filed before the NBSA..The Court was also told that the body had dealt with the complaints and had passed orders effectively. The counsel for NBSA added that sometimes, the complainant was satisfied with an apology..“If you don’t prosecute when a crime has happened, you can’t claim to be robust… You may as well close down”, the Court responded..The Court asked the regulatory bodies why they didn’t inform the police when matters concerning such violations had surfaced. It has now sought an affidavit from each of these regulatory bodies..The matter is listed for three weeks from today.