NALSAR students considering legal action against local media channels; May initiate proceedings for defamation, criminal intimidation

A group of students at NALSAR University, Hyderabad are contemplating taking legal action against a number of local media channels after the channels aired footage which alleged that the students were “drunk” and “created a ruckus”. The video clips relate to an incident that occurred on Thursday night, when a group of students were about to return to the University campus from a city pub..While walking toward the taxi, four NALSAR students noticed a man leering at them and also taking a video recording of the students. When confronted and asked to delete the video, the man refused to do so. Seeking to prevent an escalation of the situation, the students were bundled into a cab by their juniors. However, concerned about their juniors, the students returned back to the pub, only to find a large number of policemen and a cameraman who reportedly works for ABN Andhra Jyoti..The man who had been recording the video was also present at the scene. The students immediately tried to speak to the policemen and explain what the man had been doing. It is at this point of time that things appear to have gotten completely out of hand. Instead of focusing on the fact that someone was brazenly making video recordings of women leaving a pub, the cameraman chose to jeer and taunt the students. Even when the students returned to their cab, the cameraman did not stop recording, clearly trying to provoke a reaction from the students..The following day, local media channels repeatedly aired edited footage of the incident, with audio commentary describing the female students as “rowdy” and “drunk”. In fact, one clip uploaded on the TV9 Youtube channel, is titled “Should women be blamed for crimes against them?” There is no mention of the origins of the incident, the fact that someone was making video recordings of women leaving a pub. Although TV9 subsequently removed the clippings from their Youtube channel (after the students managed to get enough people to report the clipping), other channels continued to broadcast the edited footage. As per the students, TV9 has declined to take any responsibility for the contents of the clippings..Speaking to Bar & Bench, NALSAR student Shruthi Chandrasekaran who was one of the students who was repeatedly heckled at by the cameraman, said that some of the footage was so badly edited that you could “clearly hear the cameraman heckling us.” Not only was the edited footage a completely false representation of what took place (the students were not inebriated nor were they “rowdy”), it avoided the real question altogether. What is particularly disturbing about the incident says Chandrasekaran, is the fact that the episode has only made women feel extremely unsafe in the city. “Why is no one focusing on the fact that a man was making a video recording of us leaving a pub?” she asks..The Delhi High Court recently highlighted the need for a regulatory body for electronic media. The High Cout reportedly observed that,.“..there was desperate rush to grab eyeballs which had led the broadcast media to sully itself with sensationalization by adding colour and spice to events and transgressing individual privacy.”.The students, on their part, are planning to fight back; they have the support of the college administration as well as the general student body. Apart from taking legal recourse, the students also plan on generating awareness through social media. “We just want to reach out to as many people as we can,” says Chandrasekaran, “we need their support.”