The treatment of women journalists at a political protest is not a peripheral matter of crowd control. It goes to the heart of the relationship between state power, public dissent and the press. Allegations by three women journalists of sexual harassment and inappropriate touching by police officers during a demonstration in Delhi therefore demand more than an expression of regret. They require a credible investigation and, if established, consequences.

There is an important distinction between policing a protest and policing the people who report it. Officers may have to disperse an unlawful assembly, remove barricades or detain demonstrators. None of those responsibilities gives them licence to intimidate, humiliate or sexually harass journalists doing their jobs. A journalist does not surrender professional rights merely by entering a protest site. The allegations are disturbing because journalists are supposed to be witnesses to the exercise of state authority. Their cameras, notebooks and reports provide the public with an independent record of what happens when police confront citizens.

If those documenting such encounters are........

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