Courts, Legislatures Media Freedom

One day in March 2003 I was approached by the young journalists of the Karnatak University Journalism Students Association in Bangalore to participate in a panel discus sion on contempt of court in relation to the press. In the aftermath of the initiation of contempt proceedings against a wide section of the press in the Mysore judges sex scan dal controversy, they were very worried. What can and cannot be written about while reporting about the judici ary? they seemed to be asking themselves. As I began to educate myself about the contempt law, the critical nature of the law itself and these court proceedings became ap parent to me.

At the panel discussion, I realized that the anxiety felt by the journalists was bordering on fear. There I learnt on sound authority that there were indications that the judges of the Supreme Court meant to take the case to its logical conclusion, in spite of the widespread belief that the re porting was by and large accurate. If it was not, why then were transfers of the concerned judges announced, only to be cancelled in the face of massive protests from the legal community and the general public, first in Assam, where resentment at long being the dustbin for the nation's un wanted persons ran high, and then in Rajasthan? It dawned on me then that this was to be a test case.

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