Delhi high court refuses to rule on India's Daughter ban

A decision on whether to lift India’s ban on the broadcast of the rape documentary India’s Daughter now lies with Delhi’s chief justice after a court refused to temporarily overturn it. A two-judge bench at Delhi’s high court cited “emotional” media coverage as a reason it could not rule on the ban. The British film about the rape of a student in December 2012 is widely available to watch online. A division bench headed by the chief justice, G Rohini, will now hear the petition, filed by two law students, on 18 March. Rohini is the first female chief justice of the Delhi high court. Last week Delhi police went to a lower court to prevent the broadcast of India’s Daughter by an Indian TV station on International Women’s Day. But after it was shown on BBC4 in the UK, the film went viral on the internet, attracting a huge audience in India and widespread discussion. The documentary ran into controversy even before it could be screened when excerpts from an interview with one of the four convicted rapists, Mukesh Singh, were played on the NDTV channel. Singh seemed to attempt to justify the rape, and said the woman should not have fought back. All four men were sentenced to death a year ago. They have appealed to the supreme court, which has yet to fix a date for the hearings. The Delhi high court felt the broadcast of India’s Daughter could influence the judicial process. “Judges are not superheroes, they are not from outer space,” said justice BD Ahmed. “They can get subconsciously pressured by emotional media trials.” Arguing against the ban, counsel Naman Joshi cited the case of Black Friday, a Bollywood film that inspired the British director Danny Boyle to make Slumdog Millionaire. The release of Black Friday, a film on the 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai, was stopped by a court in 2005 as some of the accused felt the film would prejudice their trial. But once the trial court gave its verdict, the supreme court lifted the ban. In the case of India’s Daughter, the trial is long over and the four men on death row have not objected to the broadcast of the film. The ban on the film has created a peculiar dilemma for Indian people, especially in universities. It cannot be screened publicly but is widely discussed. “It’s impossible to not talk about the documentary,” a college professor told the Delhi Times. “Whether we teach political science or literary theory, it’s very relevant. The students have seen it, and it’s being discussed in classrooms.”