India Today Challenges Censure By Press Council

The supreme court yesterday issued notice to actress Pooja Bhatt on a petition by the newsmagazine India Today , challenging a Press Council of India order censuring it for reproducing the cover page of a film publication Stardust carrying an obscene photograph of the actress as an illustration for an article on the hazards of the Internet.

The notice was issued by a division bench consisting of Justice Sujatha V Manohar and Justice M Srinivasan after hearing counsel for India Today.

It was the contention of the counsel for the magazine that the article was meant to highlight the threat faced by innocent people by manipulation on the internet and it was to focus on this problem that the magazine had thought it fit to reproduce the photograph appearing in the Stardust cover page.

 

The issue relates to the publication of a photograph in the Stardust magazine which the actress alleged in a complaint to the press council was not her.

She had also alleged that her face had been juxtaposed on to the body of someone else by a computer expert on the Internet and that the photograph had shown her in obscene postures.

The Press Council, which went into the matter, censured both the Stardust and the India Today, which used the cover page photograph in the film magazine as an illustration to highlight the hazards of the Internet.

Counsel for India Today submitted before the court that the magazine should in no way be clubbed with the Stardust publication.

This should not be construed as an attempt by the magazine to sell. The photograph in Stardust was used only on its newsworthiness and in the context of condemning such manipulation on the Internet, he said.

He said the magazine should not in any manner be bracketted with the Stardust as its readers were a different kind altogether.

After hearing the counsel the judges ordered issue of notice to Pooja Bhatt who is the first respondent.

The notice is returnable in four weeks.