Arrests – Journalists

The Supreme Court on Monday restrained West Bengal Police from arresting four TV journalists who had carried out a sting operation to videograph state ministers and Trinamool Congress MLAs allegedly taking bribes. Appearing for the journalists – Bhupendra Pratap Singh, Abhishek Singh, Hemant Chowrasia and Ayush Kumar Singh – senior advocates Harish Salve, Mahesh Jethmalani and Anupam Lal Das told a bench of Justices R Banumathi and A S Bopanna that West Bengal Police had registered an FIR against them to “wreak vengeance” for the sting operation as it exposed corruption in the state government.

The bench said, “The petitioners are granted interim protection from arrest subject to the condition that they shall cooperate with the investigation until further orders from this court. If any of the petitioners are in possession of passport, the same shall be surrendered.” The petitioners had submitted video footage claiming to have captured state ministers Tapas Roy, Moloy Ghatak, Arup Roy, Chandrakant Sinha and MLAs Ashok Kumar Dey, Swapan Debnath as well as other TMC functionaries “demanding and accepting bribes”. “The sting operation shows cabinet ministers, ministers of state, MLAs and their conduits of the incumbent government in West Bengal demanding and accepting monies for considering the proposal of introducing robotic science education in the curriculum of all schools,” the petitioners said.