Nearly 30 years after one of Tamil Nadu’s most sensational television broadcasts brought together a fugitive forest brigand, a celebrity journalist and a rising television network, the Madras High Court has held that a defamatory allegation aired during the programme caused sufficient injury to the then prominent actor R Sukanya’s reputation to warrant damages.
In a judgment delivered on June 5, Justice K Kumaresh Babu dismissed an appeal filed by Sun TV Network Ltd. and upheld a trial court decree directing the broadcaster to pay Rs 10,00,500 as damages to the actor. The case arose from a telecast that aired on April 17, 1996, during one of the most politically charged periods in Tamil Nadu’s modern history.
At the time, Sukanya was among the most recognisable faces in South Indian cinema. She had acted in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada films and had established herself as a leading actor of the 1990s. The telecast came just weeks before a crucial parliamentary and Assembly election that would dramatically reshape the State’s political landscape.
The programme, ‘Nerukku Ner’(Face to Face), featured an interview conducted by journalist and Nakkheeran editor R Rajagopal, better known as Nakkheeran Gopal, with the forest brigand Veerappan, then India’s most wanted fugitive.
During the interview, Veerappan made allegations linking Sukanya to an alleged political scandal involving the son of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. The actor maintained that the claims were entirely false and defamatory.
Justice Babu noted that the trial court had found the allegations to be defamatory and that neither the broadcaster nor the interviewer had seriously disputed the existence of the statement itself.
The court recounted that Sukanya had argued that the allegation was “offensive to plaintiff’s dignity” and had lowered her image among “friends, family and the general public.” She also contended that the broadcaster had deliberately retained the offending portion even while muting certain expletives used elsewhere in the interview.
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The dispute would travel through the courts for nearly three decades. Sukanya first approached the Madras High Court in 1996 seeking damages and an injunction. The case was later transferred to a city civil court in Chennai because of changes in pecuniary jurisdiction. In April 2015, the trial court ruled in her favour and directed Sun TV to pay damages. The broadcaster then appealed.
Before the high court, Sun TV argued that it was merely a platform that had telecast an interview recorded by another party. The network said it had carried a disclaimer stating that the views expressed belonged to Veerappan and not to the channel. It also pointed to a subsequent expression of regret published in a Tamil magazine after receiving legal notice from the actor.
The court, however, attached considerable significance to a telecast agreement between Sun TV and Nakkheeran.
Evidence showed that Veerappan’s interview had originally been recorded for approximately nine hours. The broadcaster eventually edited the footage into about four hours of programming and telecast it over several days.
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The judgment noted that the agreement granted Sun TV broad editorial authority over the content. The trial court had found, and the high court agreed, that the broadcaster possessed the right to “edit, cut, delete or modify” portions of the interview before telecast.
“Having reserved the right to edit, cut, delete or modify, alter and add any portion with an unrestricted right, it is the duty that is enjoined upon the appellant to verify the contents of the interview before its publication,” Justice Babu wrote.
The judge also rejected the argument that Sukanya had failed to prove damage to her reputation.
“The loss of reputation follows a defamatory or derogatory statement,” the judgment said, noting that the actor had testified that she lost professional opportunities and that her testimony had not been effectively discredited during cross-examination.
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One of the most striking observations in the judgment concerned the broadcaster’s apology. After receiving notice from Sukanya, Sun TV did not broadcast an apology through its own channel. Instead, it published a statement expressing regret in a Tamil magazine.
Justice Babu questioned that choice. “If such a regret been published in its own broadcast, it would have reached the very same viewer who would have viewed the publication it had made earlier,” the court said. “This itself would show malice on the part of the appellant.”
The ruling closes a chapter that began in an era when satellite television was transforming public discourse in Tamil Nadu. The mid-1990s marked the rise of private television networks, the growing influence of celebrity journalism with journalist-cum-editor faces such as Gopal, and an extraordinary public fascination with Veerappan, whose rare interviews drew enormous audiences.
For Sukanya, the litigation lasted longer than many acting careers. The actor who approached the court in 1996, at the height of her fame and in the year she appeared in the blockbuster film Indian, finally received judicial vindication three decades later.
