In an era of cut-throat competition and TRP wars, overzealous news channels and news agencies jumped the gun on Tuesday to wrongly report the Supreme Court's verdict on triple talaq only to make hasty amends later. But the damage had been done by then as confusion prevailed for the better part of the day.
Being the seniormost CJI Khehar was the first judge to read out his judgment wherein he upheld the constitutional validity of the practice and the media outlets went about town flashing the news. Within a few minutes though, the majority verdict of the bench had held triple talaq unconstitutional and struck it down. A red-faced media had to make a complete U-turn thereafter.
Chief Justice Khehar and Justice S Abdul Nazeer held triple talaq to be part of fundamental right to religion of Muslims and said it was not unconstitutional. With the CJI reading the first judgment, some media outlets apparently assumed him be reading it for the entire bench and went ahead flashing that the SC was unanimous in upholding the practice of triple talaq.
They even flashed the minority judgment which ordered a stay on the age-old practice for six months so that the Government comes up with a legislation to ban the practice.
However, when Justice Kurian Joseph started reading out the operative part of his judgement and disagreed with the findings spelt out by the CJI minutes ago, it took the wind out of the media sails. With two more judges too following suit, the media persons then had to again rush out of the courtroom to convey that the SC bench had actually held the triple talaq practice unconstitutional and had struck it down.