Even if Justice Yashwant Varma is acquitted, nobody will believe he is an honest judge: Mukul Rohatgi on media trials

Senior Advocate and former Attorney General for India Mukul Rohatgi on Thursday warned that media trials have the power to permanently destroy judicial careers, citing the case of Justice Yashwant Varma.

Rohatgi stated that reputational damage caused by sustained media coverage cannot be reversed even by a court acquittal.

“There is the case of that judge in whose house they say the money was found. The whole media has painted him black...If he’s ultimately acquitted, nobody’s going to believe that he was an honest judge…His career is over, whatever may happen to the case," the senior lawyer said, without referring to the judge's name.

Rohatgi had appeared for Justice Varma in his petition challenging the Lok Sabha Speaker's decision to constitute a three-member committee against him under the Judges (Inquiry) Act for his impeachment. The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the plea.

He was speaking at a panel discussion held on January 16 during the launch of Beyond Headlines: Volume I — The Medium and Its Mutations, authored by Aamir Khan Wali. The event was moderated by journalist and educator Avantika Gautam, and held in remembrance of constitutional lawyer Nani Palkhivala. Senior Advocate Percival Billimoria was a co-panelist.

Rohatgi said that relentless television coverage, repetition of allegations and visual amplification had the effect of delivering “instant justice” long before courts examined evidence.

Calling media trials “one of the very major issues drowning us today,” Rohatgi said that mainstream media has caused deeper and more lasting damage than social media because of its perceived authority.

“You show the same person’s face five million times on television and say this man is a gangster. That destroys far more than social media,” he said.

While acknowledging the constitutional protection of free speech under Article 19(1)(a), he said the media had crossed a line by eroding privacy, dignity and the right to a fair trial.

He also rejected the idea of specialised media tribunals, describing tribunalisation in India as a failed experiment. Rohatgi argued that tribunals lacked constitutional safeguards and were vulnerable to executive influence, unlike High Courts.

Billimoria highlighted how misinformation in mainstream media was influencing judicial perception, referring to an ongoing case involving stray dogs. He said that courts were being driven by a widely circulated but incorrect narrative that dogs routinely killed children.

“Today, our judges genuinely believe that dogs kill children. Now, that is not the truth...we cannot live in an echo chamber," he said.

He explained that repeated media reporting and algorithm-driven amplification had created an echo chamber, where unverified claims were reinforced until they appeared to be established facts. Billimoria said this phenomenon was playing out not just on social media platforms, but also through mainstream television coverage.

Referring to arguments he advanced before the Supreme Court, Billimoria said that judges must be cautious not to decide cases based on narratives created outside the courtroom.

Billimoria pointed out that animal welfare bodies across the country had opposed indiscriminate removal of dogs and stressed that the issue was being wrongly framed as one of danger rather than governance failure. He invoked Article 51A of the Constitution, which recognises compassion towards living creatures and said that the focus should instead be on addressing failures in government sterilisation and animal-control programmes.

“Let’s tackle the real problem...why are they (stray dogs) there? Because of failure of a government program."