Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Supreme Court on Tuesday, October 13, asked for a senior Delhi Police officer to appear before it in person on Thursday and explain allegations that women journalists were assaulted and detained while reporting on last weekend’s protests in the capital against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
“We would like some senior officer to remain present here and explain,” Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said, making it clear that the police would have to answer the charges. He spoke after senior advocate Indira Jaising mentioned a writ petition filed by the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI). Jaising told the court that a copy of the plea and advance notice had been given to Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.
What the journalists want
The NWMI petition, filed on Monday, says several women reporters were manhandled, stopped from working and arbitrarily detained by Delhi Police on October 10 and 11, even after they identified themselves and showed valid press cards. It argues that the inquiry already under way into alleged police excesses does not look specifically at journalists’ access to protest sites, their detention or their forcible removal.
The group wants the court to:
- lay down enforceable safeguards and standard operating procedures for how police deal with the media at protests, dharnas and public demonstrations;
- direct the Centre to ensure women journalists doing genuine reporting are not physically handled, intimidated, detained or removed just for being at or near a protest;
- order an independent inquiry into the events of October 10 and 11 and action against the police personnel responsible.
Contempt pleas pile up
Other pleas were mentioned at the same hearing. Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan raised a contempt petition by the Free Speech Collective, which says journalists were assaulted in breach of the court’s October 10 direction that mediapersons covering the protests must not be harassed, and senior advocate C.U. Singh mentioned a similar plea. Separate petitions filed by a reporter and by a lawyers’ group also allege repeated detentions, manhandling and damaged phones.
According to reports from the ground, at least 12 journalists were detained on Sunday alone. They included a reporter from the Hindi daily Hindustan who said he was pushed, hurt and forced onto a police bus despite wearing his press card, and three Indian Express journalists who were taken from Connaught Place to Chhatrasal Stadium before being let go.
What happens on Thursday
The NWMI plea will be heard on Thursday, October 15, alongside the larger set of cases on the police crackdown, which was put off on Tuesday because a judge on the bench was unwell. At the Solicitor General’s request, the government also has until October 15 to file a compliance report on the court’s earlier directions and to respond to some of the contempt petitions.
Those earlier orders, passed by a special bench on Sunday, said peaceful, unarmed protesters cannot be detained except as the law allows, and asked for public transport, internet services and free movement to be restored in central Delhi. The journalists’ complaints now add a press-freedom angle to the court’s scrutiny of how the protests were policed.
