‘This is yellow journalism’: Supreme Court refuses to grant relief to journalist guilty of defaming lawyer

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday refused to quash a one-month jail sentence awarded to a Karnataka journalist for defaming a lawyer 13 years ago.

A bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana upheld the concurrent findings of the Karnataka High Court and a lower court there, which convicted Vishwanath Shetty for writing “defamatory articles” against the lawyer and allowed a public notary to be owned and published by him. Wrote in a local daily.

Among other things, Shetty has been condemned by the courts for the language used by him – referring to the lawyer as “third class”.

“You use that kind of language and claim you’re a journalist?” The bench, which also included Justices Surya Kant and Hema Kohli, summarily dismissed Shetty’s appeal against the Karnataka High Court order. “This is yellow journalism,” it said.

The bench was also of the view that the High Court was lenient in awarding Shetty only one month in jail. ,He was very generous… He deserves much more than this.’

In March this year, the Karnataka High Court had upheld a 2013 judgment of a lower court in the state’s Koppa district in which Shetty was convicted.

However, it modified the lower court’s order to reduce Shetty’s jail term from one year to one month. The court also increased the fine imposed on him from Rs 6,000 to Rs 50,000. 40 thousand was to be paid by way of fine to the complainant lawyer.

Read also: ‘Every journalist deserves protection’: Supreme Court dismisses sedition case against Vinod Dua

False Fact: Journalist

Shetty’s counsel Sanjay Nuli argued that the High Court had made a mistake in convicting His client, because he based his decision on “false facts”. According to Nulli, the high court held that Shetty had been convicted of a similar offense in the past, yet he stood firm and continued to publish defamatory articles.

In his appeal, Shetty said that he has been acquitted in the earlier defamation case.

Nully argued that the High Court was “influenced” by a “false fact” and had held Shetty to be a double criminal.

However, the Supreme Court bench remained adamant. “Even though he has not been convicted of any offense in the past, we are not on his side and that is the point,” the court refused to issue notice on appeal to the other party.

matter

The civil judge of Koppa had on January 21, 2013 convicted Shetty for writing several defamatory articles against the complainant, who was an advocate practicing in the same field.

In his criminal complaint filed before the court on 23 August 2008, the lawyer alleged that Shetty’s weekly paper was “filled with baseless and provocative articles to extort money”.

The lawyer claimed that the articles targeting him were intended to undermine his profession and were published with the intention of tarnishing his reputation. He also objected to the “objectionable” words used to describe them, apart from complaining that Shetty’s articles accuse him of registering sale deeds relating to land belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes without government permission. They were “baseless and false”.

The lawyer claimed that Shetty had even referred to him as a “third class advocate” in one of his articles, even though his name was not in the report.

Shetty, in turn, stated that he published the articles in good faith and in the public interest, which, he argued, was provided for under the law. His action, he said, was covered under one of 10 exemptions to paper media publications.

The trial court’s order highlighted “objectionable passages” in Shetty’s articles and ruled that the use of words such as “brutal” and “lawyer of the third class” clearly equated to a “derogatory phrase”.

“Lawyer profession is known to be a noble profession and his profession also depends on his proficiency. Any stigma attached to an advocate will affect his profession,” the trial court had said.

It was also noted that only Shetty’s weekly newspaper had published news related to the lawyer. The court said that if this is true then the matter should have been publicized in other newspapers as well. This fact, the court concluded, shows that Shetty had published the defamatory articles with “ultra-motive intent”.

Shetty’s defense was rejected by the trial court, which considered it “unreliable” and “not entitled to the benefit of exceptions made in the defamation law”.

(Edited by Gitanjali Das)

Read also: Press freedom is supreme, but one-way traffic cannot be, says Supreme Court

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