The Supreme Court on Thursday entertained Ratan Tata's petition against the publication of private conversations he had with Niira Radia but refrained from ordering an injunction against disclosure of the Radia tapes.
In fact, Tata did not press for an immediate restraint on the continued publication of his conversations with Radia, who handles corporate communications of the Tata group companies, after the Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly stressed that they needed to hear the defence of two news magazines -- Open and Outlook -- which carried excerpts of the tapes.
Attorney general G E Vahanvati also added that the government did not have the wherewithal to stop media from publishing such excerpts from some of the tapes, which appeared to be in the hands of many unidentified persons.
For all practical purposes, however, Tata can hope to have respite from another stash of Radia tapes becoming public. Continuing publication may be seen as interference with the process of judicial adjudication, now that the country's top court has entertained a petition where Tata has sought protection of his right to privacy.
The Bench accepted the plea of Tata's counsel, Harish Salve, to make the two magazines parties in the case, stemming from the allegation of the veteran industrialist that publication of his conversations with Radia had violated his right to privacy. Notices are being sent to the two magazines. Besides, the court asked the ministries of home and finance as well as CBI and the Income Tax department to file their responses within 10 days.
"The reputation of Ratan Tata is not only of great value to himself, but also has a significant bearing on the reputation of the commercial organizations comprising the Tata group of companies," the petition said.
The matter will now be heard on December 13.
Meanwhile, the response has encouraged Radia to consider filing a similar petition in the SC against violation of her privacy. Her petition is likely to be filed in the apex court on Friday.
"Her right to privacy has been blatantly breached by the publication of these tapes which were created from the interception of her alleged conversations with several persons, ostensibly for investigation into a crime. If that was the purpose of the interception, how come these tapes come into public domain? Who leaked them? Can a citizen be subjected to so much of harassment," sources close to her said.
While stressing that they needed to hear the defence of the two magazines, the Bench of Justices Singhvi and Ganguly said they did not want the hearing to be merely an academic exercise.
Interestingly, the I-T department on Thursday morning deposited with the Supreme Court in a sealed cover the original tapes of intercepts of 5,871 telephonic conversations of Radia, which were recorded in two tranches between 2008 and 2010, in compliance of a directive in a petition by the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), seeking apex court monitoring of the CBI probe into the 2G spectrum scam.
The Bench said it had directed submission of the original tapes in a sealed cover after making copies available to the investigating agencies for the "purpose of preserving them".
Taking a cue from the SC's remark, Salve said Tata had no intention of standing in the way of a thorough investigation into the 2G spectrum scam or any other crime for which these conversations were intercepted by the I-T department. But this did not mean these should find their way to media houses and that purely private conversations were put out in the media to embarrass the petitioner, he said.
He cited the Telegraph Rules as well as the February 2006 guidelines framed by the government to regulate interception of telephone conversations. "All these show that the right to privacy is an important right and the government did not want to intrude...unless necessary," he said.
Terming the publication of surreptitiously obtained tapes from I-T department, which did the interception, as a gross violation of his right to privacy, Tata has sought a direction to the government to inquire into the unauthorized leakage of the tapes from official agencies.