Twitter-generated Moral Panic and Its Effect on Pretrial Incarceration/ Bail: Contextualizing the Tale of ‘Folk Devil’ Aryan Khan

Abstract

The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, which was enacted with an intent to control drug abuse and prohibit its trade, has blurred the line between the offender and the victim, particularly in cases of addicts. Nonetheless, the focus of this study is the multifarious victimization of the offender: overcriminalization in terms of measures, lengthy pretrial incarceration and increased sensationalism in cases of offenders belonging to high strata of society, thus creating a moral panic. Incident of victimization is juxtaposed with public concern solicited by the reporting of cases. The stigmatization endured and the trauma suffered by the accused owing to the full media glare strike on their innocence and violate their right to life and dignity. Aim and Objective: A criminal justice system is an institutionalized means of rendering justice. One of the virtuous traits of a criminal justice system modelled on the ethos of due process is its attempt to achieve certainty and transparency in its process and the outcomes. However, no institution is infallible as manifested by the misuse of draconian provisions of the NDPS Act 1985. This study first evaluates whether disposal of bail matters in NDPS cases is a classic case of overcriminalization leading to the victimization of the offender; second, it gauges the impact of public reaction depicting ‘moral panic’ of the offender in the disposal of bail matters. Methodology: The study was conducted through a detailed content analysis of the public reaction in the Aryan Khan drug case on the micro-blogging site Twitter with the help of the content analysis tool NVivo. Findings: The outcome of the study manifests positive interrelationship between moral panic and public perception, positive interrelationship between moral panic and status of the person arrested which consequentially affects the period of pretrial incarceration (denial of bail).