On September 15, the Supreme Court while listening to a plea challenging the FIR filed against the journalists who were part of the report on Manipur violence, said, it was a “counter-narrative” on the part of the government.
A bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud noted that even if the statements in the EGI’s report were assumed to be false, they did not amount to an offence under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Section 153A of the IPC criminalises actions that promote hatred and enmity between different groups.
Notably, an FIR was filed against the president of the Editors Guild of India (EGI) and three members of the guild’s fact-finding team, which had gone to Manipur to assess the media’s reportage of the ethnic conflict in the state. The complainant had alleged that the report submitted by the team was “false, fabricated and sponsored”, and the charges in the FIR included promoting enmity between different groups.
Providing two weeks time to the editor and other members of the fact-finding report, the apex court asked the government to present a response to the current petition.
The court wondered how mere submission of a report could constitute a crime and said the crime of promoting enmity between groups, as mentioned in the FIR, is not borne out.
The Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta, objected to the Supreme Court considering the petition and suggested that the petitioners should seek relief from the Manipur High Court.
Mehta said, “The Manipur government is not concerned with all these. My only worry is any organisation now can put up a fact-finding committee, file a report and place it alongside the counter views and then come before the SC seeking quashing of the FIR. With this (kind of report), we may not be able to control the narrative-building by both sides.”
The CJI said, “The Army wrote to the EGI and complained of biased or one-sided reporting of the ethnic violence. The Army invited them. They went to the ground and submitted a report.”
Appearing for the complainant who had lodged the FIR against EGI members, senior advocate Guru Krishnakumar stated that his client would withdraw the complaint if the EGI retracted its report, which was published on September 2. He also added that, the report has aggravated tensions in the town and a curfew has been imposed after the report was published.
‘‘There is no whisper of crime in the complaint based on which the FIR has been registered,” a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said during the hearing.
“The report may be right or wrong. But that is what free speech is all about,” the bench said during the hearing.
“Assuming that the EGI report is false, it is not an offence under Section 153A. There are falsehoods in articles published across the country every day, do we prosecute all journalists under Section 153A?” the CJI said.
Section 153A penalises “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony,” he added.
“How was the report a declaration to the court? How is an offence under Section 200 made out? Read your complaint,” he asked.
Section 200 says “Whoever corruptly uses or attempts to use as true any such declaration, knowing the same to be false in any material point, shall be punished in the same manner as if he gave false evidence,” he added.
Notably, the Editors Guild of India (EGI) released a report of its ‘Fact-Finding Mission on Media’s Reportage of the Ethnic Violence in Manipur’. The report called the violence one-sided and framed Meiteis as the culprits whereas the Kukis as the victims. To collect the on-ground details, the EGI stationed as many as three representatives in the Meitei-majority areas. The appointees claimed that they had representative statements that confirmed that the media was playing a ‘partisan role’.
Following the report, two FIRs were lodged against the president and three members of the Editors Guild of India (EGI), accusing the body of ‘trying to instigate more clashes’ in the state. The accused are namely EGI president Seema Mustafa and the three members of the ‘fact-finding mission’: Bharat Bhushan, Seema Guha, and Sanjay Kapoor.
“There are clear indications that the leadership of the state became partisan during the conflict. It should have avoided taking sides in the ethnic conflict but it failed to do its duty as a democratic government,” the report had said.
