Big Media outlets in New Delhi were quick to report on the news of a 16-year-old girl being gang-raped by her seniors in a Dehradun-based residential school. This made headlines across national publications such as The Times of India , The Indian Express, and Hindustan Times. However, none of these dailies mentioned the name of the institution. Even websites like NDTV and News18 refrained from doing so.

We were, however, informed that the director, principal, an administrative officer along with his wife, and a hostel caretaker were arrested in the case for covering up the alleged crime. These men and women, too, were not named in the reports.

What the law says

At the heart of this editorial decision are guidelines under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, which disallow the media from revealing any information that may compromise the identity of an underage victim.

The POCSO Act states in Section 23: (2) “No reports in any media shall disclose, the identity of a child including his name, address, photograph, family details, school, neighbourhood or any other particulars which may lead to disclosure of identity of the child.”

Flouting these norms can land a media professional in jail for up to one year along with a fine so the caution is understandable — most editors we spoke to in fact cited the law.

Nandagopal Rajan, New Media Editor at Indian Express, said publications cannot in any way identify the victim. “We have been hauled up by a court for even mentioning the name of a village,” he said. “We have to be as vague as possible, which is why we will say Dehradun and not even the locality in which the said incident occurred. You cannot provide any information with which the victim can be identified. We have to protect the identity of the victim—especially when it is an underage case; this is of supreme importance because the courts are very strict on it.”

He said that photographs, even if it is not of the victim, could lead to identification and are hence avoided.

“It is not editorial thinking—it is the law on how to report on the sexual assault of a minor.”

For example, one may think that a school has 3,000 students in it, and therefore naming the school will not really reveal the identity of the victim. But the scope might be narrowed down because somebody else might point out that you named the school and also mentioned the age of the victim, which narrows down the guess to fewer students and adds a lot of elements to the story. 

Sukumar Ranganathan, Editor-in-chief at Hindustan Times, said: “I think the broader reason is the possible identification of the school, and as a result, of the survivor as well.”

Meanwhile, Rajesh Mahapatra, Editor-at-Large at Hindustan Times, tweeted out today stating that the school should be named and shamed.

“I have put out a tweet stating that if the allegations are true, then why should the school not be named and shamed? This is my view as a journalist. I have not read what HT has written but have read the Express story as they seem to have more details on it. I put out the tweet after reading their story,” Mahapatra told Newslaundry stressing that this was his personal opinion.

Some inconsistencies

The sentiment underscored in Mahapatra’s tweet merits a deeper exploration. Here’s a case where the top brass of the school seems to have been involved. The alleged offence took place on August 14, and the school authorities came to know about it on August 16. The Indian Express report states that the school authorities “blamed the girl” instead of taking action or reporting the case to the police. When the girl suspected that she may have been pregnant, the school administrative officer’s wife gave her “home remedies to terminate the pregnancy”.

If these allegations stand in court, the accused top brass of the school would be complicit in the crime. These accused men and women were entrusted with taking care of hundreds of vulnerable children. Surely, parents who have their children admitted in the school deserve to know of the criminal breach of trust of which the school now stands guilty.

To put it simply: If you are a parent who is contemplating admitting your child to the school, should you not be aware of the alleged criminal conduct of the caretakers?

Isn’t it the right of parents—who are willing to shell out lakhs of rupees every year so as to provide their children with a “better education”—to know that the school they are considering sending their sons and daughters to, has a history of such crimes?

There’s also the problem of inconsistencies in who we name and shame, and who we don’t. Just last month, the father of a class 11 student of Mayo College in Ajmer alleged that his son was sexually abused by six class 12 boarders multiple times. The school, in this case, was named.

In the case of Muzaffarpur shelter house case, girls as young as seven were drugged and raped. Many media outlets in the case named the shelter house, published pictures of it and also named the owner.

It can be argued, then, that when the scene of the crime is the institute itself that has played a role in perpetuating or covering up the crime, not naming the institute works contrary to the spirit of public interest journalism.

One cannot fault editors who may want to err on the side of caution to avoid legal censure. Only recently, the Supreme Court slammed a section of the media for revealing the identity of the Rewari gang-rape survivor by stating that she is a Board Exam topper. “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,” the Bench asked.

The court in its wisdom wants to protect the survivor from the media glare, which can often be brutal and relentless, and the character assassination that may follow. And perhaps that is what needs to change in the way a section of the media in particular and society at large responds to rape cases. Revealing the name of the school should ideally put the accused in the spotlight and not result in the harassment of the survivor.