The Supreme Court on Monday issued a two-week stay on the arrest of two Madhya Pradesh journalists who have alleged custodial torture by Bhind police.

The court, however, asked the journalists to approach the high court regarding the quashing of FIRs related to criminal cases registered against them.

Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Manmohan passed the directive even as the state’s counsel submitted that the two journalists — Shashikant Jatav and Amarsingh Chouhan —were facing at least 10 cases of extortion lodged by local people.

The counsel for the journalists said that at the moment they were concerned about staying the arrests and restraining the local police from taking any coercive action against the journalists.

Without going into the merits of the allegations, the bench said it was granting a two-week protection and asked the journalists to approach the high court for relief. “…Considering the nature of the allegations, we relegate the petitioners to the concerned high court within two weeks from today. Till the time the petitioners move the high court concerned... they shall not be arrested…,” the bench said.

The Supreme Court had earlier issued a notice to the Madhya Pradesh government on the alleged torture and life threats from local police and sand mafia in Bhind district, but had declined a stay on any possible arrest of the two journalists.

An earlier bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Satish Chandra Sharma had taken the view that it is easy to level allegations against senior IPS officers, but they should have been made respondents when such insinuations were being made against the district superintendent of police.

The bench had also said that since the cases registered against the two journalists are not known, the court cannot be expected to pass any blanket order restraining the police from taking “any coercive action” as sought by the petitioners’ counsel, Warisha Farasat, appearing for the two journalists.

“Suppose you (the scribes) commit a murder, can we grant a no-coercive order? We don’t know what is the crime registered against you,” the bench told the counsel.