The order, passed by a City Civil and Sessions Court in Bengaluru, “temporarily restrains” 82 media houses from “publishing any news item that would depict them falsely in relation to Prajwal Revanna's videos” them without “substantive evidence against them, with the intention of unnecessarily tarnishing their image and reputation in the public at large”.
However, the order also states that the media houses and platforms like Google, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are not totally restrained from publishing or telecasting any news, if they think that, truth is their defense, and they have substantial evidence to defend themselves.
The order comes in the wake of the sex abuse videos allegedly recorded by Prajwal Revanna, Deve Gowda’s grandson. HD Revanna, Deve Gowda’s son was arrested two days ago on charges of kidnapping one of the women allegedly abused by his son Prajwal who is still absconding.
In the petition, the father-son duo argued that they come from a respected family with deep roots in society. They have also said that they have a rich political history and have been in public life for over 70 years. There are no allegations against them, they said.
Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy have distanced themselves from Revanna and his family. “In spite of the fact that the Plaintiffs have categorically distanced themselves from the issue by making public statements, the Defendants are repeatedly and intentionally inter-linking the Plaintiffs to the issue relating to Mr. Prajwal Revanna and his family.”
TNM has been consistently reporting about gag orders issued by Bengaluru courts. We had discovered in our last investigation that there are two media lists that a group of lawyers in Bengaluru seem to be using. One list has English and Kannada TV channels, newspapers and websites. The other list has English and Kannada TV channels and newspapers and only Kannada websites. The lawyer in this case has used list two which does not name English news websites.
Meanwhile, read all our coverage on the story here.