NEW DELHI, August 22: Two news channels and an English daily have been held guilty of revealing the identity of the minor boy involved in the MMS sex scandal by a juvenile court here. The court said they had they tried to sensationalise the case for "commercial gains".
Juvenile Justice Board Principal Magistrate Santosh Snehi Mann, in her 31-page order, said, "NDTV, ZEE TV and Times of India had contravened Section 21 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, which safeguards the delinquent's identity, privacy and confidentiality, by revealing minute details about the boy while reporting the case." The three news establishments were fined Rs 1,000 each.
Terming the role of the press in reporting the incident as "very disappointing", the court said the focus of the three organisations was less on raising a debate about the exposure and involvement of children in unethical or illegal activities, and was more on creating a sensation by writing about the juvenile involved. The court said their reporting was in "bad taste to increase circulation and viewer ship purely for commercial gains."
Taking strong exception to disclosure of the name, address, school and other facts about the juvenile, the court said "these would lead to the identification of the juvenile, his isolation, thereby exposing him to the stigma from which he needs to be protected under the Act."
The juvenile and the school where he studied had moved separate petitions in the court on December 12, 2004, complaining about the manner in which the entire incident was being highlighted by the three media organisations.
The case had created a sensation in November 2004 when pictures of a boy and a girl both students of Delhi Public School engaged in a sexual act were circulated through multi-media service (MMS) by the boy to his friends.
Later, it reached students in other schools and hit the market. Both the boy and the girl who were students of Class XII, were expelled from the school. While the boy, who was arrested, joined another school in Delhi, the girl reportedly left the country.
Subsequently, a student of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, was arrested for selling the MMS clip on the auction portal bazee.com, now ebay.in. The chief executive officer of bazee.com, Avnish Bajaj, had also been arrested in the case.
