A Test Identification Parade (TIP) is dependable only when a witness’s memory remains insulated from external influence. Yet Indian investigative practice often exposes arrested suspects through press briefings, custody walks, leaked photographs, and viral social-media circulation before any parade occurs. This paper examines whether the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, adequately protects identification evidence from such prejudicial publicity. Using a doctrinal-comparative method, it analyses the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023; the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023; the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971; the Information Technology Rules, 2021; comparative United Kingdom and United States law; and the Law Commission of India’s 200th Report. It argues that the Act’s “pendency” requirement, linked to the filing of a charge sheet or the issuance of summons or warrant, leaves the investigation stage substantially unregulated, even though pre-trial publicity may irreversibly contaminate witness memory before a TIP is held. The paper further shows that the Press Council of India and the News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority cannot fill this gap because their sanctions are non-coercive, fragmented, and largely post-facto. Drawing on the United Kingdom’s arrest-triggered strict-liability model and the Supreme Court’s proportionality reasoning in Sahara India Real Estate Corp. Ltd. v. SEBI (2012), the paper proposes two targeted reforms: redefining pendency from the point of arrest where identification is genuinely in issue, and creating a binding, platform-neutral co-regulatory framework covering print, broadcast, digital news, and social-media republication. By locating trial-by-media harm in the evidentiary contamination of TIPs rather than only reputational prejudice, the paper contributes a narrower and more operational account of fair-trial protection in Indian contempt law.