Media Trial, A Dangerous Trend: Aryama Sundaram, Senior Advocate To Kailashnath Adhikari MD, Governance Now

Taking a serious note of media trials, noted senior advocate, Aryama Sundaram has said that there is a danger in media doing trials of ongoing cases and media trials must be put to a stop.

Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now (L), Aryama Sundaram, Senior Advocate (R) | Visionary Talk Series

Taking a serious note of media trials, noted senior advocate, Aryama Sundaram has said that there is a danger in media doing trials of ongoing cases and media trials must be put to a stop.

In a conversation with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now, the senior advocate castigated media trials and said nowadays in media while a case is going on you have debates where people are discussing what is right and what is wrong, which way the court should decide which way it should not.

“This is the danger. In the doctrine of subjudice … when the matter is sub judice it ought not to be commented upon. You can comment on it reporting what has taken place. You cannot give an opinion on result or proceedings… technically this should not be correct at all and has to be put a stop to…  once the matter goes to court and in the course of hearing giving an opinion on its likely outcome is certainly wrong, the media should not encourage it at all.”

Sundaram was in a webcast as part of the Visionary Talk series held by the public policy and governance analysis platform.   

Responding to a question if celebrities when caught in legal soup are more vulnerable to harsh judgments vis a vis common man, the lawyer said it is a misnomer that celebrity gets wrong end of the stick. The fact of the matter is that celebrity also gets tremendous lauding and society give them tremendous advantages. The downfall of it is that if you go wrong anywhere then the brickbats are much higher as compared to someone who is unknown.

“If it is a celebrity, media attention is on the case The court has then the duty to show that law will be subserved. In many ways, it is also faith in the judiciary  which demands the judiciary to lay down the law with an iron hand  in such cases.”

He said a celebrity who is taking all the privileges should be ready when he does something wrong to take the punishment which comes in . “You cannot claim the privilege of not being punished for any transmission on your part.”

On the question of human resource crunch in judiciary impacting justice delivery and how to infrastructure can be stepped up in Indian courts he responded by saying that in India various appellate forums that have been given statutory tenancy to have elaborately long arguments in interlocutory matters in existing cases are taking far too long to complete, so where is the questions of touching the backlog of cases. 

Sundaram said that even though the shortage of judges has been removed in the country and even if all the courts were in full complement, he does not see the courts clearing backlog. “It is not something that is practically possible especially because cases that have more immediate, more relevant, more today here and now are coming up repeatedly, and the courts are forced to deal with those cases on a day to day basis.”

Giving the example of cases that came up during covid which could not have been pushed back or put in the queue he said there are too many cases that require here and now the attention of superior courts. “Because of that the backlog of Supreme court and the High Court’s even with full complement it is most likely to keep occurring and I don’t see how we can get rid of that backlog even if we run with full complement’’ he said.    

Sundaram also said the time taken in arguments by lawyers for the purpose of any case or matters has to be cut short completely. He also said that the govt must learn how much to appeal. The govt sets up all the tribunals which are manned by the govt and selected between the judiciary and the executive  50%-70% of pending appeals in India against tribunal orders are by the govt. “The govt should learn not to become just another litigant. If you keep doing that, how do you ever expect not to have a backlog, leave alone hearing the matter. Govt has to look at it very strictly and courts too have to strictly look at the time they will give a counsel to argue” he said.

While speaking on ethics, independence between judiciary and executive he said, we have to rest assured and believe in the integrity of the judges. “Merely because after they retire they may head some tribunal or the other ought not to be ground to make them deal with cases in any other manner than absolutely independently.”

On being asked if judicial activism exists because of the inability of the executive to take the right decisions he said there is a doctrine of separation of powers. “Because there are too many public interest litigations (PIL’s) filed which are more personal interest than public interest and impinge on policy issues, there is an accusation of judicial activism.” Law he said is very clear that the judiciary will not involve in policy issues unless it is a rarest of rare case and the policy violates a fundamental right. “.. the Lakshman Rekha must be maintained.”

On being asked if e-courts are able to facilitate deliver justice effectively or if physical appearance is more effective, Sundaram said e-courts are more than able to deliver functions assigned to them even when the nuances of physical presence are more effective and the litigant himself is not fully satisfied and would rather prefer a physical court to actually see what is going on in court. However, he said e-courts are a great start. “This time virtual hearing is absolutely excellent to the extent that senior counsels are being accused of liking it as they can appear in no. of cases in no. of courts all over. So long as the superior judiciary are themselves prepared to do the case before the case is taken up, I think virtual hearing is more than sufficient to dispense justice” he said

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