The Delhi police on Friday detained for questioning a TV channel reporter, who conducted a sting operation on a government school teacher to show that she ran a prostitution racket.

"Prakash Singh, the television reporter of Live India, was asked to join investigation by the police, but he refused. He was ultimately picked up for investigation," a senior police officer said.

His detention comes a day after police arrested a girl who appeared in the TV sting operation posing as a student. She was arrested on charges of "criminal conspiracy, cheating and fabricating false evidence".

The sting operation led to violence in the area and the teacher, Uma Khurana, was dismissed from service.

Later, One Virender Arora was arrested on September 2 for allegedly supplying the girl to Khurana. Khurana and Arora are now in judicial custody.

The channel aired the sting operation on August 30 which purportedly showed the woman telling the reporter that Khurana had allegedly filmed her in compromising position and had forced her into prostitution.

Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court stepped in to clear the muddle. The court issued notices to the Delhi government and city police after taking suo motu cognisance of media reports alleging that a sting operation carried out by a TV channel, which claimed to have exposed a sex racket run by a government school teacher, was fake and distorted.

A bench comprising Chief Justice M K Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Khanna directed the government and the Delhi Police to file its response by Monday when the matter would be taken up.

The court passed the direction when senior advocate and president of Delhi High Court Bar Association Amarjit Singh Chandioke placed before it newspaper reports questioning the authenticity of the sting operation. The bench, however, refused to issue notice to the TV channel.

"Let the government and the police file the report first," it said.