In a significant move, the Supreme Court (SC) has ruled that it will allow television interviews by accused “shall be considered at the appropriate state in the trial” and thereby affecting ongoing trials.
Like most modern societies, India believes in presumption of innocence even at the cost of allowing many guilty to get away to protect the one innocent from being falsely charged. So far, video recording was not accepted as evidence because of fear of police intimidation and coercion may force accused to capitulate to pressure and accept guilt under camera for crimes they did not commit.
With this verdict, the SC was careful to say that only “relevance and admissibility of the statement” made “before the mediapersons” are to be considered thus ruling out closed circuit television footage, sting operations, etc out of the ambit for consideration.
