Popular legal battles on Cyber Crimes in India
1. Ritika Sharma Case
Ritika Sharma (Name changed for privacy concerns) was a Delhi school girl who after being cyber stalked and threatened reported the crime to Delhi police. She had befriended a stranger on social networking platform facebook and ended up sharing her whatsapp contact, residential address and other personal details with the stranger. The man forced her to go out on a date and she found that he was pretending to be someone else and eventually blocked him from all platforms. The man started to stalk and even threaten her. The police eventually lodged the complaint and later several campaigns were done to spread awareness amidst teenagers to not share personal details with strangers over the internet.
2. Ritu Kohli Case
This cyber stalking case was the first of its kind reported in India. Ritu Kohli was being stalked by a person named Manish, who in turn was using her name to illegally chat with people on a website. He also went ahead to send obscene and offensive messages under her name and distributed her contact to the people. She ended up receiving abusive calls on the telephone and later lodged a complaint to the police. Back then the police lodged it under Section 509 of the IPC, however it didn’t cover cyber stalking. Eventually the Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2008 came into force covering the cyber crimes.
3. Shreya Singhal Case
A case which led to striking down of the Section 66A of the IT Act 2008, because of the vagueness of words like ‘grossly offensive’, ‘purpose of causing annoyance’, etc. as it contradicted with the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by the constitution. The case started when two girls from Mumbai were booked over a facebook post, leading to Shreya Singhal, a law graduate, filing a petition in the court regarding the violation of freedom of the constitutional right by the same and the Supreme Court striking down the section that restricts online speech.
4. M. K. Mathew Case
Majeesh K. Mathew vs.the State of Kerala case was a landmark judgement by the Kerala High court which stated that comments on social media containing sexually explicit content against a woman amounts to online sexual harassment. In this case, the accused had allegedly posted images of the complainant and her husband with obscene comments pointing at sexual behavior. The accused also engaged in cyber stalking and trolling. The accused did so over varying political beliefs and the court later found him guilty of abusive behavior with indulgence in cyberbullying, cyber misogyny and cybersexism.
5. Avinash Bajaj Case
In 2004, the accused Avinash Bajaj, CEO of the e-commerce portal ‘Bazee’ was arrested and given bail later under Section 67 of IT Act on account of an obscene video uploaded on Bazee.com for sale. A case was made against him under the Section 67 of the IT Act as read with Section 85 of the IT Act. Later in 2012, the Supreme Court overturned the 2004 judgement, holding that Avnish Bajaj wasn’t vicariously liable for the Company’s actions and he couldn’t be charged under the provisions of the IT Act for the company wasn’t arraigned as an accused in the case. After this case, Section 79 of the IT Act was amended to provide immunity to intermediaries in connection with content made available by third parties online.
