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MEA regrets inability to produce Murdoch before Delhi court

The external affairs ministry has expressed its inability to execute the orders of a Delhi court to produce before it America-based media baron Rupert Murdoch to face obscenity charges in India, on the ground that such offences are not covered under the extradition treaty.

In a letter to Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Prem Kumar, who had issued the warrant against Murdoch on July 6, the ministry said that ''in terms of the extradition treaty currently in force between India and the United States, offences for which the person in question is charged are not extraditable.'' The letter of the ministry, dated August 25, was received by the court last week. The case comes up for further hearing on October 24.

The court had earlier issued summons to Murdoch and others on a complaint alleging that the various channels of the Star TV network were telecasting obscene software which violated the Indecent Representation of Women Act and also tended to create a bad influence on impressionable minds.

Earlier last year, the court had issued summons to Murdoch and thirty others, including Star TV India's chief executive officer Rathikant Basu in the case filed by advocate Arun Agarwal, but these had been refused with the report that Murdoch was not resident in India. However, Basu and others appeared before the court and were granted bail.

The letter from the ministry says the warrant involved Murdoch's arrest from his Los Angeles address and producing him before the court, but this was not possible. Murdoch had been charged under Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code, Section 4 read with Sections 6 and 7 of the Indecent Representation of Women (prohibition) Act 1986 , Section 5a read with Section 7 of the Cinematograph Act 1952.

The magistrate, who had earlier directed issue of summons by registered post and international courier at the media baron's addresses in Australia and the United States, had later, on July 6, issued warrants of arrest, sent to the ministry on July 16 with the note ''please do not fail herein.''

UNI

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