The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Friday (January 5) sought a response from the Delhi police and other Union government investigative agencies on a petition filed by NewsClick and its founder-editor Prabir Purkayastha.
The petitioners had sought guidelines regarding the search and seizure of digital devices by law enforcement, legal news website LiveLaw reported.
Employees of and contributors to NewsClick, a news website, had their devices seized by a special unit of the Delhi police in October.
Police say NewsClick received funding from China to criticise Indian government policies as part of a “conspiracy to disrupt [the] sovereignty of India and to cause disaffection against India”.
The portal denies the charges.
Some who were raided have alleged that the police violated device seizure norms by not providing hash values of their devices – a kind of digital fingerprint – and a list of items confiscated during the seizure.
According to PTI, a bench comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and Sandeep Mehta sought responses from the Union government, the Delhi police, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Income Tax Department, the Enforcement Directorate “and others” on the petition.
The bench initially expressed its reluctance to entertain the petition, LiveLaw reported. “We don’t appreciate everyone coming directly under Article 32,” it quoted Justice Gavai as saying.
Article 32 of the constitution deals with the right to move the Supreme Court regarding the enforcement of fundamental rights.
Kapil Sibal, the lawyer representing the petitioners on Friday, responded that the court had previously entertained other petitions dealing with device seizure norms.
The bench ultimately agreed to issue notice on the petition and tagged it with other, similar petitions, LiveLaw reported.
A similar petition was filed in the top court by the Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP) in October 2022, saying that inadequate regulations on the seizure of digital devices opened up personal data to overreach by law enforcement, the legal news portal Supreme Court Observer said.
During a December 2023 hearing involving the FMP’s petition, the court directed the Union government to use provisions from the Central Bureau of Investigation’s manual for searching and seizing devices until it made its own guidelines, The Hindu reported.
The Union government said then that it needed a maximum of three more months to bring out its own guidelines.