Supreme Court gives more freedom to "Sting Journalism"

New Delhi, Oct 18: The Supreme Court has dismissed the Delhi police's bid to prosecute the two journalists who had conducted a sting operation on cash-for-questions scam which led to the expulsion of 11 MPs in 2005.

The 2010 Delhi high court decision that corruption can be exposed by undercover journalists without informing authorities has attained finality.

A bench of judges headed by Justice Aftab Alam dismissed the special leave petition filed by the police against the high court verdict quashing the charge sheet in relation to Aniruddha Bahal and Suhasini Raj of cobrapost.com.

The SC agreed with the HC decision that if the journalists had taken the police into confidence about their operation to expose MPs taking bribes to ask questions in Parliament, and said "the respective MPs would have been given information by the police beforehand and would have been cautioned about the entire operation."

With the decision of SC, the police's attempt to prosecute the journalists has failed. Moreover, SC has also rejected MPs complaints against an aired story titled "Operation Duryodhan" in Dec 2005, Which was related to the exposed operation.

Meanwhile, SC has also dismissed the Delhi police's bid under Section 24 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, which claimed that a statement made somebody who offered a bribe to a public servant "shall not subject such person to a prosecution" on the charge of abetting the offence.

OneIndia News