SC to hear Radia case in-camera

Normally courtroom is overcrowded with media persons, lawyers on 'watching briefs' and stragglers

The Supreme Court Bench hearing industrialist Ratan Tata’s petition on privacy said Thursday’s hearing on the tape recordings of lobbyist Niira Radia will be heard in-camera (behind closed doors).

Normally, the courtroom is overcrowded with media persons and lawyers. In-camera proceedings will bar the public as well as media.

The Bench headed by Justice G S Singhvi, which is hearing the petition, passed the order on Tuesday to hold the proceedings behind closed doors as some parts of the tape recordings are sensitive. It also reflected the court’s suspicion expressed recently that the media’s reporting of proceedings are not fair.

Tata counsel Harish Salve urged that the hearing should be in-camera.

Salve has been highly critical of the media’s role after some of the 5,800-page transcriptions went into the hands of a newspaper, and some names were revealed along with their criminal conduct.

In-camera proceedings are done in exceptional cases. In the Hawala case in the 1990s, late Justice J S Verma’s court barred the media for many days since the transactions indicted some of the top political leaders of that time.

Last week, the court had asked the government to produce records of the committee dealing with the authorisation of surveillance on Radia conversations with bigwigs in politics and industry.

Tata wants private conversations, which have nothing to do with criminality, be separated and destroyed. He claims that his prayer is in public interest and should cover all persons.