Karnataka High Court Quashes Case Against TV9 Channel Over 2012 Court Violence, Says Decriminalization Of Cable TV Act Is Retrospective

Quashing proceedings against TV9 Karnataka Pvt. Ltd. and its ex-correspondents in the 2012 City Civil Court complex violence case, the Karnataka High Court said that offence under Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 was decriminalised by a 2023 central amendment and its beneficial effect must be applied retrospectively.A single-judge bench of Justice M. Nagaprasanna allowed the petition filed by TV9 News Channel and its correspondents, striking down the criminal proceedings before the CBI Special Court registered in 2025 afresh. “The offence alleged against the petitioners, once bearing the imprimatur of criminality, has since been denuded of its penal character by legislative intervention. The law, in its wisdom, has chosen to recast the alleged infraction as a civil transgression, thereby stripping it of the rigours of criminal prosecution. To permit the continuation of criminal proceedings in the face of such a change would be to disregard not only the letter of the amended statute but also the spirit of fairness that animates criminal jurisprudence,” the court observed.It added that the benefit of a subsequent amendment to Section 16 [Punishment for contravention of provisions of the Act] of the Cable TV Networks Act that decriminalised the offence must be accorded to the petitioners.For context, in March 2012, when the former minister Gali Janardhana Reddy was produced in the City Civil Court Compound, the commotion that followed ended up in a clash between the media personnel and the members of the bar. In the ensuing altercations, many were injured, and as many as 191 FIRs were registered. The apex court later transferred the entire investigation to the CBI.In 2019, the High Court quashed proceedings against the channel and two of its correspondents, with liberty to the CBI to initiate fresh proceedings after complying with the mandatory sanction requirement of the authorised authority under S. 18 of the Cable Television Networks Act and Section 196 CrPC [sanction for offences against the state].In 2023, the state government allowed CBI to register a complaint in accordance with Section 18 of the Act against TV9 and its former employees, and the concerned court took cognisance of the offences under Sections 5[program code adherence] and 16 of the Cable TV Networks Act.However, even before the registration of the fresh complaint in 2023, through the coming into force of the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023, Section 16 of the Cable TV Networks Act was decriminalised, among others. The new amendment contemplated only regulatory consequences such as the issuance of an advisory, censure, warning, or the imposition of a monetary penalty for contravening the Cable TV Act.“Clause 29 of the Schedule to the Amendment Act, which substitutes Section 16 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, unequivocally embodies this legislative shift, replacing penal sanctions with a graded system of civil penalties administered by a designated officer. The inevitable consequence of this amendment is that the element of criminality, which once inhered in Section 16, stands completely effaced”, the court initially noted in the order.Referring to the apex court judgment in T. Barai v. Henry Ah Hoe(1982) , the single judge bench iterated that an amendment decriminalising an act must be extended retrospectively to pending cases if it gives the benefit to an accused. The single judge bench also observed that there was no criminal offence under Section 16 of the Cable TV Networks Act on the date of registration of the fresh complaint in 2023.“The chronology of events, when viewed in its entirety, unveils not merely delay, but a profound inertia that has eroded the very substratum of the prosecution. What was once a live controversy has, through the passage of time and the evolution of law, been rendered a relic devoid of legal vitality. The liberty reserved by this Court in its earlier pronouncement was never intended to be an unbridled charter for resurrection of proceedings at the whim of the State, long after the ambers of the cause had turned cold”, the single judge bench further added.The court also referred to Manoj Kumar Sharma v. State of Chhattisgarh (2016) to hold that an inordinate delay of eight years in filing a complaint, in itself constitutes a ground to quash the proceedings, even when the court reserved CBI the liberty to file a fresh complaint. “The State, having remained in a state of conspicuous dormancy for nearly eight years, now seeks to rekindle proceedings on the very same factual foundation—untouched, unaltered, and unembellished by any fresh material. Such an attempt, in the considered view of this Court, is not the exercise of lawful liberty, but its distortion,” Justice M Nagaprasanna remarked.The court, after making the above observations, quashed the entire criminal proceedings against TV9 and its ex-employees pending before the Additional. CMM, Bengaluru....

Karnataka High Court Quashes Case Against TV9 Channel Over 2012 Court Violence, Says Decriminalization Of Cable TV Act Is Retrospective

Sebin James

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