Supreme Court Stays HC Order Allowing Police Custody Of 2 Women Journalists In Case Over Video Against Telangana CM

The Supreme Court today stayed a Telangana High Court order which allowed the state police to take into custody two women journalists despite grant of bail to them in a case over alleged objectionable video against Chief Minister Revanth Reddy.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta passed the order, after hearing Senior Advocate Siddharth Dave (for petitioner-women journalists).

During the hearing, Dave argued that taking a person into police custody after grant of bail, without the bail having been cancelled, is not permissible. He submitted that an accused can be called by the police for the purpose of investigation, but not taken into custody while the bail is operating.

Hearing him, the bench issued notice to the respondent-State.

Briefly put, the case pertains to an objectionable video against CM Revanth Reddy which went viral on X. According to the FIR, this video showed a Pulse TV representative posing provocative questions to a person, who then made abusive and derogatory remarks against the CM.

Based on these allegations, the petitioners (Managing Director and News Reporter of Pulse News) were booked under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act and Sections 11, 61(2), 352 and 353(2) of the BNS.

As per the petition, the petitioners were granted bail by the Judicial Magistrate's Court on 17 March. However, nearly 200 days thereafter, without the bail having been cancelled, they were sought to be sent into police custody "for further questioning". It is asserted that they have been regularly appearing before the IO to cooperate with the investigation and no cogent reason has been given for their police custody at this point.

The petitioners claim that the police has already seized various devices from the office of petitioner No.1 (a senior journalist) as well as the personal devices of her and her husband.

"It is submitted that this is a classic case of the Police high-handedness of the State on the senior Journalists of the society to please their political superiors and to harass the life of the Petitioners and as such the Order granting police custody is mechanical, un-reasoned and liable to be set aside", the plea states.

According to the prosecution, the petitioners had responsibility to edit the material, before telecasting it. Their custody was sought as the police intended to seize their mobile phones and other electronic storage devices where abusive videos against CM Reddy were stored.

Case Title: POGADADABNDA REVATHI AND ANR. Versus THE STATE OF TELANGANA, SLP(Crl) No. 16536/2025