Policies/Regulation

The Supreme Court on December 11 laid down an absolute bar on the media to publish or air the names or any material which may even remotely reveal the identity of victims of sexual crimes. “No person can print or publish in print, electronic, social media, etc. the name of the victim or even in a remote manner disclose any facts which can lead to the victim being identified and which should make her identity known to the public at large. The bar extends to anything which can even remotely be used to identify the victim,” a Bench of Justices Madan
B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta laid down the rule in their judgment.

The court held that the bar on disclosure under Section 228A(2) of the IPC was not confined to just the name of the victim but actually meant that the “identity of the victim should not be discernible from any matter published in the media”. “The intention of the lawmakers was that the victim of such offences should not be identifiable so that they do not face any hostile discrimination or harassment in the future,” Justice Gupta, who authored the verdict, observed.