Maldives Police Service and Maldives Broadcasting Commission has issued an “appeal” to all media, urging not to broadcast any content or news that can impact on the investigation of the murder of blogger and activist Yameen Rasheed.

In a series of tweets posted on Tuesday night, Police said that this was a critical time in the investigation and broadcasting content or news may impact the investigation. As such, Police appealed to all media not to share or broadcast that may have this effect.

Referring to this, Broadcasting Commission had also released a statement. The Broadcom statement called on the same appeal as the Police, adding that public peace had to be taken into consideration when broadcasting content of this nature. Additionally, the statement had advised all broadcasters to refrain from broadcasting any content that was in contradiction to the Laws on Defamation, Broadcasting and Codes of Practice for the Broadcasting sector.

Many journalists had claimed that this was done to deliberately hinder journalists and journalism. The tweets and statements from the two agencies had come at a time when some media stations had already publicized investigative reports on the murder, pieced from CCTV footages, photos and information released. Raajje.mv and RaajjeTV had published a timeline of the murder, while other online medias have pieced together investigative reports.

While Police had “appealed” not to spread information on the case, Police had released the photos of two suspects involved in the murder prior to their arrest.