11 November,2010 05:53 PM IST | | A Correspondent
The Karnataka High Court on Thursday dismissed a contempt of court case filed against MiD DAY by the wife and son of sitting High Court judge Justice Sridhar Rao.
Pulling up the Bangalore University for its maladministration, Justice N Kumar said that the case could not be viewed as contempt of court as the attack was not on a judge but on Bangalore University which is an autonomous body.
Justice Kumar said that prima facie it appeared that all is not well in Bangalore University. "Investigative journalism is necessary for the proper functioning of democracy. It is high time that not only judges but also their family members uphold that majesty of the institution," Justice Kumar noted.
The case against MiD DAY was filed by Vijaya and Phaniraj Kashyap, wife and son of Justice Shridhar Rao. In May 2009, the Bangalore edition of this paper had reported that Bangalore University has miraculously re-evaluated 3,000 answer scripts in less than a week to cover up the irregularity of reassessing the lone paper of a VIP's son.
The story brought out how of the 3,000 law students who had applied for the re-evaluation, only Phaniraj Kashyap's answer script was reassessed. Then a LLB student Kashyap, scored 18 marks in a paper but it went up to 65 after the re-evaluation.