In a scathing indictment of the judiciary's handling of cases related to press freedom, retired Orissa High Court Chief Justice S Muralidhar on Friday said that courts in India are often inconsistent when it comes to granting relief to journalists. .The former judge was speaking at the BG Verghese Memorial Lecture held at the India International Centre in Delhi on the topic ‘Media, Courts and Freedom of Expression’.He said that courts issue gag orders and injunctions that stifle legitimate reporting, adding,"Take down orders and gag orders by the State and by the courts, at all levels, have become commonplace. Ironically, fact checkers who call out fake news are accused of spreading harm."When journalists have approached courts for relief from criminal prosecution or arrest, the outcomes have been uneven, the retired judge said."When individual journalists, who have been subjected to the criminal law processes, have approached the Supreme Court, its response has been inconsistent. Some have received protection from arrest or bail, in good time. Some have had to wait for long. Some have not been given any relief at all.".Fact checkers who call out fake news are accused of spreading harm.Justice S Muralidhar .Investigative journalism has been threatened due to fear of civil and criminal defamation proceedings initiated by powerful corporates and politicians, the judge lamented."These brave reporters are then scurrying between lawyers’ offices and courts seeking protection from arrest or bail or defending SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) suits," Justice Muralidhar said.He cited specific instances in this regard including a stand-up comic’s satirical post on preferential treatment in court leading to contempt proceedings being sanctioned against him by the Attorney General."What seemed to have precipitated the move was the gentleman re-tweeting a cartoon that suggested executive dominance over the judiciary," the judge pointed out..“The nation wants to know why, in the times now, in our republic, in India today it is so hard to tolerate a healthy sense of humour, the ability to laugh at oneself or take a dig at the government?”Justice S Muralidhar.He went on to say that in 2023, after the BBC aired a documentary scrutinising Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting invoked emergency provisions of the Information Technology Rules to take it down. Income Tax surveys on BBC offices followed soon after. A party spokesperson dubbed it the “Bhrasht Bakwas Corporation.”He further pointed to the Ananda Vikatan incident, where the entire site of the Tamil magazine was blocked because of a cartoon showing PM Modi shackled next to Donald Trump. The Madras High Court allowed the site to be restored, but only if the cartoon was removed.“The freedom of the press does not extend to making fun of the country and its 140-crore people,” a BJP spokesperson had said..In an apparent dig at the television news channels, Justice Muralidhar asked,“The nation wants to know why, in the times now, in our republic, in India today, it is so hard to tolerate a healthy sense of humour, the ability to laugh at oneself or take a dig at the government?”.He also cited the example of internet shutdowns in Kashmir during the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. He recounted how Kashmir Times editor Anuradha Bhasin had petitioned the Supreme Court in 2019 to challenge the shutdown.The Court’s judgment in 2020 affirmed the constitutional protection of speech and trade over the internet, but left the core issues like the proportionality of shutdowns untouched, merely directing a review committee to examine restrictions weekly.“No real immediate relief was given to the petitioners,” he noted.When the Foundation for Media Professionals filed a follow-up plea stating the government had not complied, the Court's response was “lukewarm” and it passed no consequential orders, he said. Even three years later, when non-compliance continued, the Court refused to entertain fresh applications.“It appeared to be an instance of judicial abdication,” the former judge said.Meanwhile, India continued to top the global charts on internet shutdowns, accounting for 84 out of 294 globally in 2024 alone, Muralidhar lamented..A free press and an independent judiciary are symbiotic and one is essential for the other to stay alive, he underscored.However, he lamented that both are being tested today with the press often toeing the line of the executive and the courts granting relief depending on who the journalist was..For an independent judiciary to remain effective, it needs a free press — and for the press to stay free, it needs an independent judiciary.Justice S Muralidhar.Interestingly, Justice Muralidhar also highlighted how judges themselves use the press when it suits them for curated interviews or to highlight statistics and initiatives of judiciary.Certain correspondents are favoured by some of the CJIs who are given exclusive scoops about the institution’s inner workings, he said."The Courts regularly use the media to carry their press releases on the judiciary’s achievements, the disposal of cases in Lok Adalats. Incoming and outgoing CJIs give interviews to a few select journalists. A few correspondents are favoured by some of the CJIs, and sometimes other judges, with exclusive scoops about the institution’s inner workings. Not infrequently a garrulous judge holds fort from the dais making gratuitous comments, wanting them to be relayed through the press," he said.However, judges are quick to take offence when critiqued, he pointed out.“The judiciary would like to tell the press where it gets off."He brought up the 2018 press conference by Justices Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur, and Kurian Joseph — a rare moment when Supreme Court judges went public with grievances over case allocation.And yet, just a year later, when then-CJI Gogoi was accused of sexual harassment, the same judge presided over a special Saturday bench and requested the media not to report on it, Justice Muralidhar reminded the gathering.In the United Kingdom and the United States of America, he said, even harsh criticism of the judiciary is often met with silence. "The Daily Mirror once published upside-down pictures of judges with the caption “YOU FOOLS!” and the Daily Mail called Supreme Court judges “Enemies of the People.” No contempt action followed.".However, Indian courts have often responded with bristling indignation, he said. From Arundhati Roy’s jail time for her critique of the Narmada judgment to Shillong Times editor Patricia Mukhim being fined ₹2 lakh for an editorial, the examples are plenty.Wikipedia too recently attracted a contempt notice from the Delhi High Court for creating a page documenting ANI’s case, the retired judge highlighted.The Supreme Court, Justice Muralidhar noted, later asked why the High Court was being so "touchy".The judiciary must learn to receive criticism, he underscored..When individual journalists, who have been subjected to the criminal law processes, have approached the Supreme Court, its response has been inconsistent.Justice S Muralidhar .He also touched upon about the physical safety of journalists in India. Quoting the India Press Freedom Annual Report, Justice Muralidhar said five journalists were killed in 2023, with 226 others targeted - nearly 150 of them by state actors. Several were detained, raided, arrested or prevented from travelling. The list included names like Jyotiranjan Mohapatra, who was brutally assaulted in Odisha; Nikhil Wagle, whose car was attacked in Pune; and Vinay Pandey, who received beheading threats for reporting on Gaza. He also referred to cases like that of Scroll journalist Supriya Sharma and photojournalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo, who were prevented from collecting her Pulitzer Prize in New York.The former judge detailed how arrests, surveillance and even physical attacks are increasingly used as tools of intimidation, while laws like the Public Safety Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) continue to silence reportage.In this regard, he highlighted the 2024 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, where India was ranked 159 out of 180 countries. He pointed out that this modest rise from 161 in 2023 was likely “because some other countries had done so badly, that their ranking had plummeted.”However, Union Information & Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s response in Parliament was to discredit the index entirely and instead cite a growth in the number of registered newspapers and satellite channels as proof of a flourishing media landscape, the judge said..On the legislative framework, he remarked that the Press Council of India held moral authority, but was largely toothless. He pointed to its shrinking credibility and commented on the irony of its website promoting the Prime Minister’s Pariksha Pe Charcha. As for the self-regulatory News Broadcasters & Digital Association, he questioned the point of having ethics if the orders passed under them were routinely ignored..Justice Muralidhar cited Malayalam news channel MediaOne’s legal battle with the MIB, where its security clearance was revoked over its “anti-establishment stance” and alleged links with Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. The Supreme Court, in what he described as a landmark ruling, held that critical reportage on UAPA, encounter killings, or the CAA-NRC process cannot be labelled “anti-establishment.”.Duty of press to speak truth to power; critical views can't be termed anti-establishment: Supreme Court in MediaOne verdict.He also questioned the media’s own choices in the current climate. The shift from print to digital, and now to AI tools, has left very little space for verified journalism. News spreads from WhatsApp forwards and X posts faster than any newsroom can fact-check it, he said.“Can you be sure that the journalist filing a report is not a machine?” he asked.The real damage, he said, was that the ecosystem incentivised misinformation and disincentivised accountability. Troll armies, often linked to political IT cells, operate unchecked.The 2025 Global Risks Report of the World Economic Forum placed India among the countries at highest risk of disinformation for a second year in a row, the judge lamented at the end of his speech.
