The Madras High Court on Saturday ordered the Tamil Nadu government to pay Rs 25 lakh as compensation to a student of Anna University who had filed a complaint after she was allegedly sexually assaulted on the campus, reported The Indian Express.

A vacation bench of Justices S M Subramaniam and V Lakshminarayanan ordered the compensation as the first information report based on the complaint was leaked, revealing the identity of the student.

The leak had caused the complainant “trauma and humiliation”, said the bench.

The court also constituted an all-woman Special Investigation Team, comprising senior Indian Police Service officers Bhukya Sneha Priya, Ayman Jamal, and S Brinda, to probe the case.

Anna University was directed to ensure that the student continues her education without any fees or associated costs.

The order came on public interest litigations seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the matter.

The bench criticised Chennai Police Commissioner A Arun for allegedly mishandling the case and raised questions about his conduct during the initial stages of the investigation.

It expressed shock over the language used in the FIR, stating that it amounted to victim-shaming.

“When the Constitution does not discriminate between men and women, the society cannot dictate the way in which women should conduct themselves,” the court said.

According to the FIR, the accused 37-year-old Gnanasekaran had allegedly filmed the student and her partner on the university campus and then threatened to leak the footage to the dean and the couple’s parents if they didn’t comply with his demands, The News Minute reported.

Gnanasekaran allegedly took the complainant to a remote location, where he first blackmailed her before sexually assaulting her, between 7.45 pm and 8.20 pm on Monday. The FIR states that the accused illegally held the student in his custody for 40 minutes.

In a press conference on Thursday, Arun claimed that Gnanasekaran had acted alone and dismissed media reports of the involvement of a second person, reported The Indian Express.

The police had also uploaded a copy of the FIR online, which contained the private details of the complainant, but later deleted it.

“The document may have been downloaded from the [Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems] portal or obtained from the complainant’s side,” Arun had said while responding to a question about the leak. “The city police acted swiftly by arresting the accused Wednesday morning, just a day after the case was filed.”

On Saturday, the bench asked how the senior police official had concluded that another person was not involved in the assault “at the initial stage of the investigation”.

“How will the investigating officer be able to probe freely and prosecute all the accused if a superior officer jumps the gun and makes sweeping statements to the media?” asked the bench.

It directed the state government to take appropriate action, if needed, against Arun and sought a detailed report on measures to prevent future leaks of sensitive FIRs.

Appearing for the state government, Advocate General PS Raman repeated Arun’s claim before the court that the FIR leak was caused by a technical glitch and that the police department was not at fault.