New Delhi: In a judgement that has implications for confidentiality of sources that journalists cite as part of their work, a Central Bureau of Investigation court in Delhi has said India’s premier investigating agency is well within its powers to direct journalists to reveal the source of their information while doing a story.
This information can be sought under Section 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which empowers a court or a police officer to issue summons to a person for producing a document for the purposes of an investigation.
The order was passed by Delhi’s Rouse Avenue court in one of the cases pertaining to a disproportionate assets (DA) case involving Samajwadi Party leader, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav.
This case, dubbed the ‘Fake CBI Report Case’, refers to a forgery committed on a 46-page confidential CBI report that had been submitted to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover ahead of a hearing in February 2009 in the Mulayam Singh Yadav DA case. The forged report was allegedly leaked and two news channels and a newspaper reported that Yadav, then the Samajwadi party chief, may have been framed in the DA case. The Times of India had headlined the story, “CBI may admit Mulayam was framed-DIG’s internal note says agency had not verified in PIL”. This forged document was also the basis of stories done by CNN IBN and Star News.
Interestingly, it was only after the petitioner in the DA case, Vishwanath Chaturvedi, petitioned the court and questioned how a sealed cover report could land up with the media and that an SIT should be set up to investigate the same, that the CBI responded. It admitted before the court that the document was forged and the signature of its officer, Deputy Inspector General of Police Tilottama Verma, as per the opinion of the FSL expert, “had been lifted from the original note-sheet and compressed and reproduced on the alleged 17 pages review note”. The CBI’s concerned Superintendent of Police filed an FIR in the case but in 2012, the agency filed a closure report in the case stating that “it could not be established as to who forged the documents as the users of the forged documents did not disclose their source”.
The court took umbrage to this stand taken by the CBI.
“Merely because the concerned journalists denied to reveal their respective sources, as stated in the final report, the investigating agency should not have put a halt to the entire investigation. There is no statutory exemption in India to journalists from disclosing their sources to investigating agencies, more so where such disclosure is necessary for the purpose of aiding and assisting in investigation of a criminal case. The investigating agency can always bring to the notice of the concerned journalists the requirement of disclosure of the source being essential and vital to the investigation proceedings,” the court said.
The Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM’s) order further says, “The investigating agency is fully equipped under the IPC [Indian Penal Code] and CrPC to require the public persons to mandatorily join in an investigation where the investigating agency is of the opinion that such public persons are privy to any facts or circumstances pertaining to the case under investigation and public persons are under a legal duty to so join the investigation.”
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It adds, “The CBI is well within its power to direct the concerned journalists/news agencies by way of notices u/s 91 CrPC etc. to provide the required information and bring to their notice the requisite facts of the case warranting disclosure of the information as per law.”
Sanjay Kapoor, member and till recently office-bearer of Editor’s Guild of India and editor of Hard News said, “What the court is saying is right in the sense that there is no special protection to journalists. But we journalists should also be following the courage of conviction that what we are doing is right. Journalists should not be pressured to reveal their sources even if it means going to jail.”
While the court has come down on the CBI’s inability to access information from journalists, its stand has been harder on the quality of CBI’s investigation into the alleged forgery of the report.
“The final report (as submitted by the CBI) is totally silent on the aspect of investigation, if at all any conducted, as to how the official document i.e. the undated status report of the CBI which was kept in sealed cover got leaked a day before it was to be filed before the Hon’ble Apex Court, from the office of CBI, ultimately reaching the media…further, investigation is also required to be carried out by the CBI on the modus operandi adopted by the culprits for gaining access to/obtaining the official documents including probing involvement of any insider in the acts alleged and preparing the alleged forged 17 pages review note,” it says.
The CBI has been given time till March 24 to conduct an investigation and file a supplementary report.