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The people’s newsroom

PoliticsPress freedom

Delhi High Court refuses to halt probe against journalist booked on ACP's SC/ST Act complaint

The journalist says the case is a counterblast to her complaint that ACP Vivek Bhagat sexually harassed her at a protest against the Chief Election Commissioner. The Supreme Court has already barred coercive action against her.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished

Key points

  1. Justice Mini Pushkarna declined to stay the investigation into the FIR.
  2. The court sought Delhi Police's response and will hear the case after the Dussehra break.
  3. The Supreme Court on Thursday told police to take no coercive action against the journalist.

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to stay the police investigation into a case filed under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against a woman journalist, on a complaint by Assistant Commissioner of Police Vivek Bhagat.

Justice Mini Pushkarna sought the response of Delhi Police on the journalist’s plea to quash the FIR, and listed it for hearing immediately after the Dussehra break. “No no. Not like this. Just put this immediately after vacations.... I cannot pass any such orders,” the judge said when her counsel pressed for an interim stay.

Bhagat has accused the journalist of making casteist remarks and publicly humiliating him while he was on law-and-order duty at a protest near Jantar Mantar on 3 October, one of the demonstrations against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The FIR, registered on 13 October at Parliament Street police station, also names a second journalist and an unidentified person.

The journalist tells a different story. She says Bhagat touched her inappropriately and pushed her while she was filming a detained activist that day, and has filed a complaint of sexual harassment against him. Senior advocate Tanveer Ahmed Mir, for her, argued that the SC/ST case was lodged “only to intimidate” her into dropping that complaint, and that the matter “deserved an order today directing a complete stay on the investigation”. No FIR has been registered on her complaint.

She is not without protection. On Thursday the Supreme Court restrained Delhi Police from taking any coercive action against her in the SC/ST case. The second journalist’s plea for quashing was adjourned.