SC slams media: Where's anonymity of Rewari gang-rape victim?
New Delhi, Sep 18: The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed a section of the media, especially news channels, for revealing the identity of the Rewari gang-rape victim and asked how such disclosures could be stopped.
"Where is the anonymity of victim?" a bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta asked as it questioned an interview of the woman's father by news channels in the presence of co-villagers.
Hearing a plea against media gag on reporting on the probe into Muzaffarpur shelter home case, the bench expressed concern over the revelation of Rewari victim's identity: "There is something wrong... saw on news channel that a girl was raped in Rewari. They say she was a board exam topper. There is only one topper. Identifying her is not a problem at all. Probably, if you google, you will find out. Rewari is not a big city like Delhi, Kolkata... happened to see that by chance on a TV channel.
"They interviewed the victim's father with his back to the camera, but there are 50 people from the village also in front of him. They know him. They will tell 50 more and everybody would know. Now, what's to be done," the bench asked.
The bench expressed concern and asked who should be held responsible for revealing her identity. "Tell us what can be done? What should be done to prevent it? Who is responsible?"
"Where is the question of anonymity. We are concerned about her. How to stop the disclosure of identity..."
Three co-villagers had gang-raped the 19-year-old woman on September 12 after kidnapping her from the Kanina bus stand while she was on her way for coaching classes.
She said that they gave her sedative-laced water to drink and gang-raped her in a room in agricultural fields till she fell unconscious. They later dumped her at a bus stop near her village.
An advocate, assisting the court as amicus curiae, told the bench that the media sensationalize the news and hence there should be its regulation.
The court was hearing a plea that challenged a Patna High Court order to restrain the media from reporting on the investigation into the Muzaffarpur shelter home case, wherein several women inmates were raped.
The bench said it would hear the plea on September 20.
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Four astronauts return after historic lunar flyby, NASA now eyes landing on moon
Washington (PTI): Amid claps and cheers, four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis-II mission splashed down in the Pacific ocean after a historic flight to the moon – the first by humans in more than 50 years.
“The path to the moon is open but the work ahead is greater than the work behind,” Amit Kshatriya, Indian-origin NASA Associate Administrator told a press conference shortly after the Artemis-II crew returned to earth off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 eastern time on Friday.
The lunar flyby mission involving Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen was the first journey to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972 when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent three days exploring the lunar surface.
Rick Henfling, the flight director, said the Artemis II astronauts are “happy and healthy and ready to come home to Houston.”
Artemis II was the first crewed mission to utilise NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew module — demonstrating that the agency’s equipment can propel astronauts out of Earth’s orbit and bring them safely home.
"Yesterday, flight director Jeff Radigan said we had less than a degree of an angle to hit after a quarter of a million miles to the moon," Kshatriya told reporters.
"And their team hit it. This is not luck; that is 1,000 people doing their job," he said.
The mission flew 700,237 miles; its peak velocity was 24,664 m.p.h.; and the flight had an entry range of 1,957 miles but landed within one mile of its target, Henfling said.
NASA now aims to land humans on the moon where the space agency also plans to set up a habitat that would be the launchpad for future missions to Mars and beyond.
It was a triumphant homecoming for the crew of four whose record-breaking lunar flyby revealed not only swaths of the moon's far side never seen before by human eyes but a total solar eclipse.
They emerged from their bobbing capsule into the sunlight one by one.
Henfling said his team 'breathed a sigh of relief' once the side hatch opened on the Orion Integrity after it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
"We all breathed a sigh of relief once the hatch opened up, that's when we brought the team in," he said.
"We said a few words to the flight controllers, and then we turned around to the families and waved and gave them a thumbs up, and we all watched as each of their four astronauts got out of the spaceship and were hoisted up onto the helicopters. It was a great day," he added.
Henfling said his team felt "anxiety" as the four astronauts re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, but felt confident in all their training leading up the history-making lunar mission.
NASA said the Artemis III mission is "right around the corner" following its history-making journey around the moon.
"The next mission is right around the corner, and you know, we'll take the lessons learned from Artemis II," Henfling said.
"We learned a bunch on how to fly people in space, both from vehicle operations, but also from how to run a control room with a deep space mission. And when the time is right, we'll get back into specific training, and we've got a core group of about 30 flight directors, and they're all extremely capable.
"I think anybody who's assigned to that next mission is going to be as successful as us," Henfling said.
Amit Kshatriya is serving as the highest-ranking civil servant and a senior advisor to the administrator at NASA. He leads NASA's 10 centre directors, as well as the mission directorate associate administrators. He is also the agency’s chief operating officer.
Kshatriya previously served as the deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
LIVE: They are coming home.
— NASA (@NASA) April 10, 2026
Watch as the Artemis II crew returns to Earth, splashing down at around 8:07pm ET (0007 UTC April 11). https://t.co/n3vZE2rcFv
