Restraining the all-woman Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing the leak of the FIR into the sexual assault of a girl student in the Anna University campus, from harassing journalists in the name of questioning, Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the SIT to return the mobile phones seized from the scribes.

In connection with the investigation into the FIR leak, the SIT summoned a few journalists who had downloaded the FIR. The summons were issued through WhatsApp asking them to appear multiple times and made to wait for long hours. Besides questioning intrusively about their family history and properties, the SIT seized their mobile handsets. This invited condemnation from the journalist bodies and the opposition parties as an assault on freedom of the press.

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The SIT was constituted by the high court to probe the December last sexual assault case and the FIR getting leaked into the public domain. These directions were passed on a suo motu case taken up by a Division Bench.

The four affected journalists have moved the high court to restrain the SIT, headed by three women IPS officers, from harassing them on the pretext of inquiry. They submitted that though they had downloaded the FIR, the identity of the rape survivor was not revealed by them. The Chennai Press Club too had impleaded on their behalf.

It was submitted that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) had clarified that due to a technical issue the FIR was not blocked in the CCTNS portal for some time due to the shift from the Indian Penal Code regime to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita regime. It was then that the FIR was downloaded.

Justice K Ilanthirayan, passing orders on a batch of writ petitions, directed the SIT not to harass the scribes in the guise of inquiry and ordered that their seized mobile phones should be returned them. At the same time, he asked the journalists to cooperate in the probe. Then, taking to task the SIT, the Judge questioned whether the author of the FIR and the police personnel responsible for the leak had been questioned before summoning the journalists and if not why.