Telugu actress death: SC upholds jail for paramour, directs him to surrender
New Delhi (PTI): Ruling out strangulation and rape, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the two-year jail term of a man challenging his conviction for abetting the suicide of Telugu actress Pratyusha in 2002, and directed him to surrender within four weeks.
Pratyusha died in Hyderabad on February 24, 2002.
The gist of the case against Gudipalli Siddhartha Reddy, according to the remand report, is that he and Pratyusha were in love for six years.
While the relation was acceptable to Pratyusha's mother, Reddy's mother did not agree to the alliance on account of which both of them decided to commit suicide.
On February 23, 2002, both of them went in a car, purchased a pesticide bottle, mixed it in coke and consumed it. However, wisdom prevailed over them and they decided that they should not die.
They drove to Care Hospital in Hyderabad. In spite of the medical care, Pratyusha died while Reddy survived.
A bench comprising justices Rajesh Bindal and Manmohan also dismissed the plea filed by P Sarojini Devi, Pratyusha's mother, who alleged foul play in the death.
"This court holds that the accused's conduct in entering into and acting upon the suicide pact falls squarely within all the three situations envisaged in Section 107 (Abetment) of the IPC. His participation directly facilitated the deceased's suicide. "Notably, it is not his defence that the deceased was the dominant personality who pressured him into the pact. His culpability therefore stands established," the bench said.
The top court said the allegation of homicidal death by manual strangulation is wholly unsustainable.
"A wealth of ocular and medical evidence points to poisoning. The materials on record, when examined holistically, leave no room for doubt that the deceased died due to consumption of organophosphate poison, specifically Nuvacron...
"Consequently, the convergence of multiple independent expert opinions lends overwhelming credibility to the conclusion that the deceased died of poisoning," the bench said.
The top court also slammed Dr Muni Swamy, who conducted post-mortem of the actress, and said even though there was a doctor on duty on February 25, 2002, he came to the mortuary on his own and did the autopsy.
The bench said it was surprising as Dr Swamy was neither on duty at the mortuary nor on call duty as professor.
"The premature and erroneous opinion of Dr. Muni Swamy unleashed a wave of public controversy. Media reports amplified his conclusions, leading to widespread suspicion of investigators and calls for immediate action against alleged perpetrators.
"This demonstrates how a single erroneous report, when publicised prematurely, can distort public perception and derail the course of justice," the bench said.
In 2011, the Andhra Pradesh High Court reduced the jail sentence of Reddy, who was convicted for her death, to two years from the five years earlier awarded.
The trial court had on February 23, 2004, sentenced Reddy to five years' imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 5,000 on charges of abetment of suicide. It had also awarded him one more year of imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1,000 for attempting suicide.
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Union government assumes full control over TV ratings, TRAI role curtailed: Report
New Delhi: The Union government has assumed full control over television audience measurement, removing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from oversight of the ratings system that underpins the country’s ₹36,000 crore television advertising market, according to a report published on Wednesday.
The report in Mint said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) now has exclusive authority over the framework governing how television ratings are measured and regulated. TRAI had been entrusted with oversight of TV ratings in 2012 during the UPA government’s tenure. TRAI is no longer mentioned in the relevant policy document, effectively vesting sole authority in the MIB.
The report said TRAI will continue to regulate other aspects of broadcasting, including channel pricing, advertising caps, interconnection and distribution norms, service quality and compliance standards. Its role in determining how ratings agencies track viewing behaviour has been withdrawn.
Television Rating Points (TRPs), which reflect viewership patterns, guide advertisers in deciding where to allocate spending across channels and time slots.
A government source quoted in the report said the ministry could modify TRAI’s decisions even when the regulator oversaw broadcasting.
A former CEO of Prasar Bharati told the newspaper that the MIB has historically regulated rating agencies through licensing and guidelines, and by holding them accountable under existing norms.
During its tenure overseeing ratings, TRAI had taken decisions affecting the broadcast sector, which included capping advertising time at 12 minutes per hour following complaints about excessive commercial breaks and it now remains unclear how these matters will be addressed under the revised arrangement.
Satya N. Gupta, former principal advisor at TRAI, was quoted as saying that merging regulatory functions with policy oversight and removing an independent regulator from the process was a retrograde step.
TRAI’s involvement in broadcasting had earlier attracted criticism as well. In 2012, its consultation paper on quantitative limits on television advertising was viewed by some as overlapping with the Advertising Standards Council of India’s code. Subsequent recommendations covering television audience measurement, ownership of news channels and issues such as paid news had also raised concerns among sections of the industry.
Television ratings have faced scrutiny in recent years, including during the controversy involving the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), where officials of the ratings body were prosecuted over allegations of manipulation of viewership data.
