The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from all states and the Union Territories about the mechanism followed by their police to brief media in criminal cases during the probe and the trial.

A Bench of Justices B S Chauhan and S A Bobde issued notices to them and sought their replies within four weeks.

The Bench, referring to its earlier order of August 23 in which it had orally raised few questions to be addressed by the Centre and the CBI, said it would also like to have answers from the state governments and the UT administrations on those issues.

The questions on which the states were asked to respond were whether their permission is required by police to speak on certain pending criminal cases, ones related to terrorism or in sensitive cases such as riots when the name of a community may not be disclosed.

The Bench was concerned on the rank of official who could speak to media.

The News Broadcasting Association formed for the self regulation of electronic media is also involved in the matter.

The court was hearing a PIL filed in 2008 in the wake of media coverage of Aarushi and Hemraj double murder case in Noida.