KOCHI: The Kerala High Court on Thursday criticised the police for seizing gadgets, including cameras, monitors, microphones, laptops, and CCTV DVR, belonging to ‘Marunadan Malayali’ channel in connection with a case under the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The police raided the channel office and seized articles following the complaint of MLA Sreenijin, who alleged that Shajan Scaria, editor and publisher of the channel, telecast a derogatory news item against him.
“The case is to be proved mainly based on oral evidence. I do not know why the entire equipment of the channel was seized by the police,” said Justice P V Kunhikrishnan.
The court directed the Sessions Court, Ernakulam, to release the articles after imposing appropriate conditions, including condition to the effect that the petitioner shall not erase or tamper with any contents of the equipment. The police should release the monitor and cameras kept in the police station after executing a bond, said the court. The court issued the order on a petition filed by Sojan Scaria, of Kottayam, one of the two directors of the company, seeking to return the seized articles.
The prosecution submitted that, upon calculating the capacity of all items seized in the case, it will come around 36TB and hence, it requires a 72TB capacity sterile hard disk for conducting the examination. It costs nearly `1,70,000. So an application has been submitted to the district police chief, Kochi City for getting sanction to purchase the sterile hard disk.
The explanation by the prosecutor cannot be accepted, said the court.