Supreme Court gives journalist full protection in road rage case, scraps police notice to X
text_fields
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has made absolute its interim order protecting journalist Abhishek Upadhyay from arrest and coercive action in a road rage case registered in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, and quashed a police notice seeking his digital data from social media platform X.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi also barred the police from using any information obtained through the notice against Upadhyay. The court, however, clarified that it was not expressing any opinion on the merits of the allegations against him.
Upadhyay, who was among the first journalists to report allegations of irregularities in the handling of donations at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, has claimed that the road rage case was filed to harass him because of his reporting.
The court quashed an August 22 notice issued by the Ghaziabad Police to X, which had sought information relating to Upadhyay’s account, including login credentials, email ID, IP addresses and device identification numbers. The notice covered a period of nearly three months before the alleged road rage incident, which occurred on August 18.
Justice Bagchi said seeking a person’s “digital footsteps” in a road rage case appeared excessive. The bench observed that the police’s claim that the data was needed to trace Upadhyay was inconsistent with the nature of the information sought in the notice.
“Seizing data of three months prior to the date of the alleged incident seems to be an overkill,” the court said, adding that confidential or personal information relating to a period before the incident could not be obtained. It further held that information relating to the period after the FIR could be sought only if alternative investigative measures were found inadequate.
The court directed that any information received by the police pursuant to the notice shall not be used against the journalist. It also allowed Upadhyay to challenge the FIR before the jurisdictional high court.
The FIR was registered on a complaint by a two-wheeler rider, who alleged that Upadhyay hit his vehicle from behind and then threatened and abused him. The case also invoked provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
On August 25, the Supreme Court had granted Upadhyay interim protection from arrest after he claimed that the allegations were baseless and sought preservation of CCTV footage from the area.