Live India

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Live India is an Indian Hindi TV channel owned by Broadcast Initiatives Ltd., focusing on news and commentary. It was earlier known as Janmat, when it was focused on "views"; now the channel is sometimes calledhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox sandbox Live India (Janmat).

In a Rs. 400 million upgrade in August 2007, it opened news bureaus at Srinagar, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata and Guwahati as well as its earlier offices at Mumbai and Delhi.

Sudhir Chaudhary is the CEO of Live India.

Contents

[edit] Schoolteacher sending girl students into prostitution 'expose'

On August 28 2007, the channel aired a sting operation covering a porn racket run by a schoolteacher in Delhi involving school girls. A lady in Vivek Vihar, where the teacher Uma Khurana used to teach at a girl's school, gave the lead to the channel, after which the reporter, acting as a customer, fixed up a meeting with Mrs. Khurana at Cross River mall in late August. The footage aired shows Khurana negotiating a deal of Rs. 4,000 for the girl’s “services”. He paid Rs. 400 to her and she handed over the 15-year-old girl, an ex-student at her earlier school[1]. Later, the girl was taken into confidence, and revealed that Khurana's method was to serve the students a drink laced with drugs[2] after which she would take pictures of them in an obscene pose. These were later used by her to blackmail students into prostitution.

The day following the broadcast, a crowd of several hundred people gathered at the school. After burning a police van parked nearby, they entered the school premises, pulled the teacher out of the teacher's room, and thrashed her badly.

This led to calls for sting operations being curtailed. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which has been trying to stifle sting operations, especially against politicians, said that “It should have been left to the police to take action against the accused.”[3]

Meanwhile, the role of Live India, the channel which aired the sting is being scrutinised by the police. The police had arrested, Khurana, a teacher at the Government Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya's Daryaganj branch, after the mob violence on Thursday.

But the police and parents claim that the channel's approach in broadcasting the expose was wrong. It is believed the channel had conducted the sting over a month back, when Khurana was a teacher at the Vivek Vihar branch of the school.[4]

[edit] Sting unravels

On September 6, the investigating police team revealed that the girl shown in the video was not Khurana's student, but a reporter with a small Noida newspaper, Rashmi Singh[5], who acted the role at the instance of the Live India reporter Prakash Singh who initially broke the story.

The Hindustan Times quoted Live India’s CEO Sudhir Choudhury as saying that the contention that Rashmi was neither a prostitute nor a schoolgirl does not absolve Khurana of her crime. “In almost all such operations, reporters assume fake identities to carry out the sting effectively. Our job is to give an idea and not provide full evidence.”[6]

[edit] Court Verdict

On Wednesday, 12 September 2007, The high court in the Indian capital, Delhi, has ordered that a schoolteacher who was sacked after a fake television "sting" operation must be reinstated. A police investigation later revealed the sting had been faked and the teacher falsely accused. The undercover journalist, Prakash Singh, who made the report was arrested. Police later questioned staff at the Live India news channel which broadcast the secretly-filmed tape on 30 August. Announcing her bail, the judge said she had been "more of a victim than an offender". [7]

[edit] Government Ban

The Indian Government banned the channel for a month due to the false sting. It was banned because it breached the Cable Networks Regulation Act, 1995, by broadcasting an admittedly doctored sting operation.[8]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Pratul Sharma & Neeraj Chauhan. "Sting op triggers riots in Old Delhi", Indian Express Delhi Newsline, August 31, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-01. 
  2. ^ "Delhi scarred by TV sting operations", Times of India, 31 Aug 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-01. 
  3. ^ Chetan Chauhan. "Sting revives debate on content", Hindustan Times, August 31, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-01. 
  4. ^ Puneet Nicholas Yadav. "Cops helpless in school scandal case", DNA - India, September 01, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-01. 
  5. ^ "Sex scam: Crime Branch arrests 'schoolgirl'", NDTV, September 7, 2007 (New Delhi). Retrieved on 2007-09-07. 
  6. ^ Abhishek Bhalla and Ravi Bajpai. "When’s a sting not a sting?", Hindustan Times, September 07, 2007. 
  7. ^ Ninad Thakur. "Cops helpless in school scandal case", BBC News, September 13, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-13. 
  8. ^ Jyotsna Singh. "India bans faked report channel", BBC News, September 21, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-21. 

[edit] External links

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