Lift ban on India's daughter: Editors' Guild demands

The Guild said the ban is"wholly unwarranted" as it is based on a "misunderstanding of the power and the message behind it."

"The documentary portrays the courage, sensitivity and liberal outlook of a family traumatised by the brutality inflicted on the daughter, the continuing shameful attitudes towards women among the convict across well as the educated including lawyers and multiple voices in support of women's freedom and dignity..." it says in a statement.

The Guild's protest comes in the wake of the government ban on the telecast of "India's daughter", directed by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin. The rationale for the ban was  that it was in the interests of justice and public order as the film "created a situation of tension and fear amongst women" and as that the convict would use the media to further his case in the appeal that was sub-judice seems to be an afterthought.

The documentary includes interviews of the victim's parents, doctors,  police, lawyers and one of the rapists. Despite the ban, It  aired by the BBC on Wednesday night in UK.

The documentary kicked up controversy as it includes certain comments of Mukesh Singh, one of the four men sentenced to death for rape and murder holding the woman responsible for the fate she met.

The Guild says while  the Supreme Court has declared that there should be the broadest freedom to express even the most unacceptable of views," the message that emerges from the documentary is wholly positive and its power is such as to make people re-examine their own attitudes and the attitudes of people around them."

The Guild contends that the  Nirbhaya incident has been an obvious matter of public interest and has through all the stages of the investigation, trial and confirmation by the high court, been subject to a widespread public debate and discussion, protests and demonstrations and enquiry by the Justice Verma Commission that suggested reform of the law.

"To raise the issue of sub judice now at the stage of final appeal in the Supreme Court and seek to still discussion is absurd," it says. 

"Judges, particularly in the Supreme Court, are by training and temperament immune to the happenings in the public sphere outside the court, and it is an insult to the Supreme Court to suggest that the airing of the convict's perverted views would tend to interfere with the course of justice," it says.

"The Editors Guild of India appeals to the Government of India to revoke the ban forthwith and enable the people to view what is a positive and powerful documentary touching on the freedom, dignity and safety of women," the statement says.