Delhi High Court Directs Centre to File Status Report on Actor Rakul Preet Singh's Plea, Actor Seeks to Implead Other Channels

On December 9, the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) issued awarning in an order against the news channels Zee News, Zee 24 Taas, Zee Hindustani, TimesNow, India Today, AajTak, India TV, News Nation and ABP News finding them to be at fault for publishing vilifying reports against Singh in stories linking Bollywood actors to the drug mafia. The three channels of Zee Network were also asked to air a public apology for their reports against Singh.

Sr. Adv. Aman Hingorani appearing for Singh today sought and was granted leave of the court to implead other news channels as well in the matter. The single judge bench of Justice Navin Chawla hearing the matter has given Singh 2 weeks' time to file her response to the Centre's status report.

Hingorani referred to the Cable Television Network Rules and the NBSA's order and submitted that it was ultimately upon the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to take action, however they had passed the buck to the NBSA. He therefore sought to know from the Ministry as to what action was taken by it on Rakul's case.

The NBSA in its order had directed all channels to immediately remove the offensive videos, if still available on their websites or YouTube or other links, and to report the same to the authority within 7 days.

The reports were run by the channels in the context of the reporting of the Sushant Singh Rajput case. The channels claimed that Rhea Chakraborty gave a statement to the Narcotics Control Bureau that Rakul Preet Singh was involved in drugs. However, the authority found that most of these channels omitted to report the retraction statement of Rhea Chakraborty whereby she denied making any such disclosure to the NCB.

Earlier, Rakul Preet Singh had approached the Delhi High Court seeking action against the channels under the Program Code framed under the Cable TV Networks(Regulation) Act.

In September, the High Court, after observing that the media should exercise restraint, passed an interim order directing the NBSA to pass orders on the actor's complaints against the reports.

Following that, the NBSA, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice A K Sikri, passed the directions.