Anna varsity case: HC pulls up SIT for ‘harassing’ journalists
Justice GK Ilanthirayan directed the SIT –which was previously constituted by the court– to refrain from harassing journalists under the pretext of questioning them while also instructing journalists to cooperate with the probe.
Chennai: The Madras High Court Tuesday criticised the Special Investigation Team (SIT) –of the Tamil Nadu police probing Anna University sexual assault case– for harassing journalists by summoning them and seizing their mobile phones before questioning police officers cops who authored and uploaded the FIR which was leaked in the case. How the FIR was leaked and hence the victim’s identity was disclosed is part of the SIT’s probe besides investigating the sexual assault of a 19-year-old student on campus by an outsider last December 23.

Justice GK Ilanthirayan directed the SIT –which was previously constituted by the court– to refrain from harassing journalists under the pretext of questioning them while also instructing journalists to cooperate with the probe. The justice said that he would pass a detailed order on the case based on a petition filed by four journalists from Chennai that the SIT had summoned them multiple times, seized some of their mobile phones and that the all-women SIT members asked them irrelevant questions about their families, personal life and their properties.
These four journalists had downloaded the FIR in the sexual assault case from the website of the state police. They had argued that it was not wrong to download and they had not revealed the survivor’s identity through their reportage. . In a press conference held following the crime, Greater Chennai City Police Commissioner A Arun had said that due to technical glitches in the transition from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the FIR was inadvertently uploaded and leaked which would otherwise get automatically locked in the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS) so that it is confidential.
The local Kotturpuram police had on December 25 last year arrested the lone accused, 37-year-old Gnanasekaran, a biryani hawker who trespassed into the university and alleged assaulted the second year student. In her complaint to the police, the woman has said that she was hanging out with her male friend behind a building on December 23 when the accused threatened them. He first assaulted her male friend, a third-year student, before sexually assaulting her. She filed the complaint the next day at the Kotturpuram all-women police station. The crime caused a massive political furore in the state.
