Bombay high court’s Nagpur bench has struck a powerful blow against misuse of IPC’s criminal defamation provision. It ruled that a newspaper fairly reporting information in the public domain without insinuation or innuendo cannot attract defamation charges. The case involved a Marathi daily that had reported on a police FIR in 2016. The person booked in the FIR subsequently lodged a criminal defamation complaint. He claimed the newspaper hadn’t done due diligence, citing as defence the chargesheet in the case not naming him an accused.

The Nagpur bench rightly concluded that registration of crimes, filing of cases in courts, progress of investigations, and arrest of persons constitute “news events which public has the right to know”. An FIR may predate a chargesheet by several weeks, months or years. No reporter can know a case’s trajectory at its inception. Moreover, FIRs are public documents, uploaded on police websites. The bench noted that a newspaper isn’t expected to investigate an FIR’s contents and verify its truthfulness but to report facts correctly. Of course, journalists should follow best practices, and seek the other side’s version. But sometimes this isn’t possible when reporting on breaking news like registration of cases or arrest of persons.

Criminal defamation is particularly problematic, allowing complainants to claim the accused had intention to harm reputation. Claiming defamation on intent to harm reputation sets a very low and subjective bar for prosecution. Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK governments were infamous for lodging criminal defamation cases indiscriminately against journalists. With public prosecutors appearing, magistrates often take cognisance of even frivolous matters, prompting a dash to HCs for relief. Sometimes, multiple cases are filed in faraway places because the statute even allows offences only “partly committed” in that jurisdiction. This is punishment disguised as process. The UK’s history of murderous duels to settle slander and insults is said to have precipitated criminal defamation’s entry as a modern penal offence. But the British decriminalised defamation in 2009. India must shed this colonial baggage, too, and get an effective civil libel law.

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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.

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