NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court onThursday echoed the public outrage over
the high-handed night-time arrests of two girls by Maharashtra police
for posting their views on a social networking site, entertaining a
PIL seeking the repeal of the controversial Section 66A of
Information.
Technology Act which has turned out be a sourceof harassment and
attempts to muzzle freedom of speech.
The court, which urged attorney general G E Vahanvati to express his
views on the plea for dispensing with the section , suggested that it
was eager to remedy the situation , while wondering whether the police
excess against the two girls — Shaheen Dhada and Rinu Shrinivasan —
from Palghar near Thane in Maharashtra was the result of mob pressure.
"We were wondering why no onewas approaching the court and were
thinking of taking suo motunotice of the incident," said a bench of
Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice J Chelameswar no sooner than
senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi sought an urgent hearing on a petition
by 21-year-old student Shreya Singhal.
"The way the children were arrested and treated like criminals
outraged the conscience of a major section of society. The way things
were done needs some kind of consideration though the seriouscharges
against the two girls appear to have been withdrawn,"the bench said.
It added that the arrests were in violation of the apex court's
guidelines prohibiting the arrest of women after sunset.
"They were arrested after sundown and for a bailable offence? So the
might of police was activated by a mob," the bench said. It seemed to
have many questions to ask, but decided to keep them for Friday when
Vahanvati is to appear.
Although the court also took noteof the arrest of a professor in
Kolkata for circulating a cartoon which took a dig at West Bengal
chief minister Mamata Banerjee , its focus was clearly on the arrest
of Dhada and Shrinivasan at Palghar just after they disapproved of the
shutdown in Mumbai after the death of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray .
Although the two girls have since been let off and the two
ultra-zealous police officers who were instrumental in their arrests
suspended, their plight seems to have sensitized the country to
thepotential of Section 66A being misused by authorities to harass
people who can at best be held guilty of exercising their
constitutional right of freedom ofexpression.
Pegging her PIL on the Palghar arrests, Singhal argued that Section
66A was loosely worded, thus leaving police and authorities with
enormous discretion to misuse it and make arbitrary arrests.
The CJI said the court would like to hear the views of a cross-section
of people and wanted to know if others would like to intervene and put
forth their views. Senior advocate Harish Salve said he would. "We
have a fundamental right to give our opinion on a public platform on
political issues. We also have the fundamental right to annoy a
politician if he is perceived to be not doing his job or is corrupt.
Section 66A is not meant to arrestpeople for expressing opinion ona
public platform," Salve said.
Rohatgi said Section 66A was replete with so many words like
'offensive', 'menacing', 'annoyance', 'inconvenience', 'danger',
'obstruction', 'insult' and 'annoyance or inconvenience' without the
Act defining their meaning. "This is unacceptable in a criminal law as
it allows the police to act arbitrarily according to their whims and
fancies," he said whilerequesting the court that till further orders,
no arrests should be made under this section.
Even as the bench said it would prefer to wait for the AG's views.
Rohatgi persisted by saying, "We get so many pesky calls despite rules
and regulations prohibiting it. It causes a lot of annoyance to every
person who gets these callsor SMSes. Should all those who send these
SMSes or make the calls be arrested under the Act?"
PIL petitioner Singhal said, "The phraseology of the aforesaid section
is so wide and vague and incapable of being judged on objective
standards that it is susceptible to wanton abuse." She said like
crores of other citizens, she was a user of internet and social
networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
"Recent events involving action taken by various authorities under
Section 66A of the IT Act has left a chilling effect on the petitioner
and crores of other internet users, violating the constitutionally
guaranteed rights, especially the right to freedom of speech and
expression," she said.
She listed incidents of abuse of Section 66A:
* April 2012 - arrest of professor of chemistry Ambikesh Mahapatrafrom
Jadavpur University for posting a cartoon concerning a political
figure on social networking site
* May 2012 -Air India employees V Jaganatharao and Mayank Sharma
arrested by Mumbai police for putting up content on social networking
sites against a trade union leader and some politicians and kept in
custody for12 days.#
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