From Our Legal Desk
Social-media reports in Kerala this week describe police action against a journalist whose mobile phone and laptop were taken after another journalist from the same Kerala-based television channel filed an FIR. The complaint, as those reports put it, alleges that the accused journalist posted on social media about irregularities inside the channel. The journalist whose devices were seized says the posts were based on information given by colleagues, including women journalists who described themselves as victims of workplace misconduct. Those claims remain allegations. They have not been independently established in court.
An FIR records a complaint. It is not a finding of guilt. Indian criminal procedure also does not treat a journalist’s phone or laptop as automatically seizable because a colleague has alleged defamation or internal misconduct. The Kerala High Court held in 2023 that police cannot seize a journalist’s mobile merely because it contains information about a crime, and that any seizure must follow the procedure in the criminal law. The court noted that journalists receive many kinds of information on their devices and that possession of such information, by itself, does not justify taking the device. Whether the present seizure met that standard is a question for the investigating agency and, if challenged, for the courts.
The social-media accounts also allege an imbalance in police response: that complaints said to have been made by the women journalists were not acted upon with comparable speed, and that some complainants were turned away. Police have not issued a detailed public explanation of either the device seizure or the status of any workplace-related complaints. Until they do, the record is incomplete. What can be said as a matter of principle is that workplace allegations by women journalists, if formally made, are required to be recorded and examined under the same law that applies to any other complaint. Delay or refusal, if proved, would be a separate failure of process.
The same channel has been in the news for another criminal case. A woman anchor employed there was booked after a television debate under provisions relating to provocation to riot, outraging religious feelings, utterances intended to hurt religious sentiments and statements promoting enmity between groups. That FIR is a matter of public record. So are her allegations of threats and online abuse, and a High Court direction this week that she be given police protection. Two criminal processes now touch the same newsroom. They arise from different facts and different complainants. Each has to be tested on its own evidence.
The commercial setting is relevant only as context, not as proof of any offence. Malayalam television news is crowded. Advertising has not expanded with the number of channels. Newer outlets have spent heavily to hire staff; several older ones have closed or contracted. Reports that a Hyderabad studio linked to the same group was shut for lack of revenue, and that Kerala operations face financial pressure, have circulated in the industry. Financial stress does not decide the truth of an FIR. It does help explain why internal disputes in newsrooms often spill into police stations and social media rather than remaining inside editorial or labour forums.
The wider pattern is familiar. Journalists do not form a single interest group. Owners, editors, anchors and reporters often pull in different directions—brand protection, political alignment, source protection, or personal grievance. Criminal law is then used as an instrument in those contests. Device seizure has a particular effect: a reporter without a phone or laptop loses sources, unpublished notes and the means of work. Courts have repeatedly warned that uncontrolled access to such material raises issues of privacy and source confidentiality. Those warnings apply whether the journalist is the complainant or the accused.
A neutral reading of the present controversy does not require taking sides on unproven workplace claims or on the social-media posts. It requires the same standard for every party: that FIRs be investigated rather than treated as verdicts; that electronic devices be taken only under the procedure the law prescribes; that complaints by women journalists, if made, be recorded and examined; and that on-air speech cases be decided on evidence, not on the volume of protest they attract. Media houses under commercial pressure are not exempt from that standard. Neither are journalists who disagree with one another.
Until official records, statements of the parties and court orders fill the gaps now occupied by social-media reports, the responsible public position is limited. Allegations are not facts. Seizure is not conviction. Silence from the police on one set of complaints, if it continues, will itself become part of the story.
