The three Supreme Court Judges, who had heard the case of Tamil actress Khushboo, have said they were misquoted regarding their remarks on live-in relationships.
A bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justices Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan, in their judgement, had said ‘ ...it is, therefore, not only desirable, but imperative that electronic and news media should also play a positive role in presenting to the general public as to what actually transpires during the course of the hearings and it should not be published in such a manner so as to get unnecessary publicity for its own papers or news channels. We hope and trust, in future, they would be little more careful, responsible and cautious in this regard.’ Justice Chauhan also took note of the fact that they were flooded with letters from the public with a request to review their orders on live-in relationships, ‘while in fact no such order was passed by us and only during the course of hearing, we had either given some instances or put some questions to the learned counsel which were answered by them.’ The Judges further said, ‘this hyperactive attitude of the common men was indeed not called for. Some have even gone to the extent of telling us that we should have known Indian mythology before putting such questions. ‘Since all those persons who have sent such letters could not have been present in the court on that particular date, they must have got information from the print and electronic media.
‘Morality and criminality are far from being cextensive.
An expression of opinion in favour of non-dogmatic and non-conventional morality has to be tolerated as the same cannot be a ground to penalise the author,’ they said.
Khushboo had made some controversial remarks on pre-marital sex which were subsequently denied by her. She also sent a legal notice to some Tamilian papers seeking withdraw of the remarks attributed to her after which 23 criminal complaints were filed against her.
The high court refused to quash the criminal proceedings against her. The Supreme Court, however, cautioned the lower judiciary that the process of criminal trial should not be set into motion unless and until strong prima facie evidence is there. It is the reputation of an individual person which must be in question and only such a person can claim to have a legal beg for justifiable claims to hang on.
The apex court also cautioned the magistrates to use their statutory powers to direct an investigation into the allegations before taking cognisance of the offences alleged as the criminal trial carries an implicit degree of cersion and it should not be triggered by false and frivolous complaints, amounting to harassment and humiliations of the accused.
The judgement was pronounced and the copies of the judgement were made available to the media.
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