The Punjab and Haryana High Court has granted an exemption to TV journalist Deepak Chaurasia from personal appearance in a 2013 POCSO case before a Gurugram court, Livelaw reported. 

Chaurasia is one of eight media persons booked and chargesheeted for airing “morphed”, “edited” and “obscene” videos of a 10-year-old girl and her family, linking it to a sexual assault case against self-styled godman Asaram Bapu. 

The others booked in the case are journalists Ajit Anjum, Chitra Tripathi, Syed Suhail, Rashid Hashmi, Lalit Singh Badgurjar, Sunil Dutt, and producer Abhinav Raj. They were chargesheeted in 2020 and 2021.   

The video, which aired on News24 and India News in December 2013, “partially revealed” the faces of the child, the complainant’s wife, and some other women. Subsequently, a zero FIR was lodged at a Gurugram police station.

At the time, Chaurasia was the editor-in-chief of India News, while Anjum was News24’s managing editor. The former then went on to join News Nation and then Zee News, which he recently quit. Meanwhile, Anjum is now an independent journalist. 

All the eight accused were charged under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 469 and 471 (forgery) of the Indian Penal Code; Sections 67B (abusing children online) and 67 (publishing or transmitting sexually explicit content) of the IT Act; and sections 23 (disclosure of identity of a child by the media) and 13C (indecent or obscene representation of a child) of the POCSO Act.

In February last year, a non-bailable warrant was issued in the case against Chaurasia. Newslaundry had reported that the then Zee News anchor had failed to appear in court because he was “required to interview Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath” on the day of the hearing. Read here.

But what is the POCSO case all about? Read here.