Chennai sexual assault case: Journalists’ phones seized over FIR leak due to govt website glitch

Among those summoned, journalists were instructed to look earlier the SIT astatine the Department of Prisons gathering successful Egmore, wherever their mobile phones and physics devices were confiscated. The reporters, immoderate of whom screen transgression for large publications, were questioned nether Sections 179 and 94 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which let authorities to summon individuals with cognition of a case.

One of the journalists, requesting anonymity, said investigators handed them questionnaires seeking idiosyncratic details, including spot ownership and marital status.

“After the inquiry, they told maine my telephone had been seized. I could retrieve it from the tribunal aft filing a petition,” the writer said.

When a writer pointed retired that helium would person taken ineligible measures if determination were plans to confiscate the phone, helium was told that lone the telephone had been confiscated and that helium wasn’t made an accused successful the case.

“Officers were mostly civilian successful their tone, but they had decided to confiscate phones adjacent arsenic they couldn’t explicate however it would assistance their case. Journalists downloaded the FIR from the authoritative tract arsenic portion of their job. There were isolated cases of immoderate airing it connected TV oregon nationalist mediums without masking the individuality of the victim. Let the newsman and exertion of those media firms beryllium held accountable for revealing the individuality of the survivor. But taking transgression enactment and confiscating phones of those who downloaded it from the authorities tract is intimidation,” said a journalist.

According to constabulary sources, those who were summoned see journalists belonging to the mainstream media arsenic good arsenic immoderate lawyers and individuals moving integer and YouTube platforms. “Confiscation of phones could person been avoided,” a elder constabulary serviceman said.

The Chennai Press Club condemned the determination and called it “a blatant enactment of intimidation and an onslaught connected journalistic freedom.”

“This freezes the contacts and networks journalists person built implicit the years successful the people of their profession,” the connection said.

The nine demanded an contiguous extremity to what it described arsenic harassment of law-abiding reporters and called for the instrumentality of each seized devices.

The lawsuit arose from a glitch connected the website connected which FIRs are uploaded. When an FIR is uploaded to the site, it has a strategy that blocks the viewing of those that are nether delicate sections and subsections similar BNSS 64, 67, 68, 70, and 79, arsenic per the database provided by the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB). In the lawsuit of the Anna University intersexual assault, the automatic process of blocking the survivor’s details, owed to the delicate quality of the FIR, did not function.

After the authorities constabulary were blamed for releasing the FIR without masking the victim’s details, the Chennai City Police Commissioner, A Arun, described the reasons for the method glitch astatine a property conference. The 14 radical summoned by police, astir of them journalists, were those who had downloaded the FIR directly.

The Madras High Court, precocious connected Wednesday, refused to intervene successful the matter. A part seat of Justices S M Subramaniam and M Jothiraman said the lawsuit was already nether reappraisal by the Supreme Court and advised petitioners to question alleviation there.

Justice Subramaniam defended the SIT’s approach, stating that journalists should attack the constabulary and explicate what happened. “If you had not done thing illegal, spell and explicate it to them,” helium said.

The journalists, near with small ineligible recourse for now, had their requests for constabulary officials to supply their questions to reporters successful penning besides denied.

K Annamalai, the authorities president of the BJP, called the constabulary enactment “foolish” and accused the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of hostility toward the press. “A writer tin person aggregate sources, and their occupation is to bring accusation to the public,” Annamalai said. “In India, we don’t inquire reporters to uncover their sources,” helium said.

The developments person heightened anxieties among galore reporters regarding SIT summonses for simply receiving an FIR transcript that was primitively released with the victim’s details owed to a responsibility astatine the authorities site.

While journalists interest that constabulary seizing their phones — which incorporate delicate communications with sources — could compromise their quality to study safely, constabulary officers who spoke to The Indian Express claimed that the full process was conducted by the SIT appointed by the Madras High Court, and not controlled by the Chennai City Police Commissionerate.