By IANS
New Delhi : Private television news channel Live India (Janmat) was Thursday banned for a month for carrying out a concocted sting operation last month showing a Delhi schoolteacher allegedly forcing some of her girl students into prostitution.
“The information and broadcasting ministry has prohibited the transmission/re-transmission of satellite channel ‘Janmat’ (assumed name Live India) on all platforms throughout the country,” an official statement said.
The ban will be effective from Thursday to Oct 20.
According to the ministry, the decision was taken after Live India telecast an admittedly doctored sting operation on Uma Khurana, a mathematics teacher of the government-run Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya at Asaf Ali road in central Delhi.
“The telecast of the said sting operation was defamatory, deliberate, false and contained suggestive innuendos and half-truths; incited violence and contained content against maintenance of law and order,” the ministry said.
“It criticised, maligned and slandered an individual in person and it denigrated children and was irresponsibly aired by the channel without exercise of due diligence in preliminary verification of the facts of the case,” it added.
Following the fake undercover operation telecast on Aug 30, hundreds of people went on a rampage and damaged the school building. The mob manhandled Khurana and torched several public vehicles.
Khurana was arrested and the Delhi government sacked her, but she was released on bail last week after the police found that the sting operation was stage-managed.
Later, the police arrested reporter Prakash Singh and an aspiring woman journalist, Rashmi Singh, on several charges of cheating, misconduct and criminal conspiracy.