Sting operations legal in Indian media

I’ve always wondered whether sting operations in India, conducted by the media, were legal. By doing a little research I found they are.  This shows that media ethics are different from county to county, because in the USA sting operations conducted by the media would be considered unethical.

Although, the Indian Constitution does not expressly mention the liberty of the press, it is evident that the liberty of the press is included in the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1).

In India the media have a right to impart the information to the public. Freedom of speech includes freedom to communicate, advertise, publish or propagate ideas and the dissemination of information. Furthermore Art. 19(1) also incorporates within itself right to receive information about any event, happening or incident etc.

Sting Operations in India are legal because according to the Indian media, the heart of journalism has to be public interest, and sting operations in their opinion serve public interest.

A Sting Operation is an operation designed to catch a person committing a crime by means of deception. The word “sting” derives its origin from American usage to mean a police undercover operation designed to ensnare criminals. In more refined terms, it can be called Investigative Journalism or Undercover Journalism.

Sting operations in India are classified as “positive” or “negative” operations. It is positive when it exposes corruption in the government and creates transparency, and negative when it hurts an individual, but does not benefit society.

Sting operations first became popular in India with www.Tehelka.com in 2000, when the news website carried out an exposé on former several prominent politicians accepting bribes from journalists posing as businessmen. This defense sting, called Operation Westend got international attention and it led to the resignation of Indian Defence Minister at the time.

Operation West End exposed bribery at the Ministry of Defense in India. It set up a fake London-based company, and contacted MoD officials for selling thermal binoculars to the Government of India. Tehelka claimed to have filmed the secretary of the BJP, the ruling party at the time, taking a bribe for helping the bogus company in procuring government contracts. Tehelka also accused the MoD officials of accepting alcohol and services of prostitutes.
This website also broke the story on match-fixing in professional Cricket in the country.

In 2007, New Delhi Television or NDTV ran a sting operation which exposed the corrupt judicial system in the country. It was one of India’s most high profile cases in recent years. It involved the son of a rich arms dealer who was accused of killing six people in 1999 when his BMW crashed through a police checkpoint. The prosecution say he was drunk.
The case took eight years to go to trial and during those eight years six of the seven witnesses ‘turned hostile’ – i.e. retracted their evidence and statements.
The seventh and last witness remained. However footage being played by NDTV showed him colluding with the defence and the prosecution lawyers to make sure that the accused went free.

Both the lawyers in this case were incredibly senior, the defence counsel being a former Congress member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house).
The NDTV case was brought before the Supreme Court of India and the news station won the case.


In my opinion sting operations are useful in India, a county where witnesses are paid off or simply pressured into retracting their statements, police are paid to contaminate evidence or refuse to register cases, lawyers are paid to go soft on opposition witnesses and, if all else fails, judges are paid to reach convenient verdicts. This just shows that standards for media ethics can be different from country to country, and even though sting operations would be considered a dishonest way of collecting information in the United States, in India it just helps keeping evreything just a little more transparent.