On Wednesday, the Union Home Ministry directed State governments and Police Chiefs to immediately withdraw cases registered under the repealed Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act. It further asked to stop registering such cases.
The move followed days after the Supreme Court expressed shock over the continued registration of cases under the repealed section.
On 24 March 2015, the Supreme Court took down a section of the constitution that authorized the police to arrest people regarding social media posts which are construed as ‘offensive’ or ‘menacing’.
The NGO People’s Union for Civil Liberties pointed out to the court this month that nearly 229 cases were pending across 11 states. The polices in these states lodged 1,307 new cases even when the provision was repealed.
On July 5, a bench lead by Justice Rohinton F Nariman exclaimed, “What is going on? It is terrible, shocking. It is distressing.” Further, the bench enquired the government to come forward with a response to make sure that police stops invoking Section 66A of the Act in First Information Reports (FIRs).
In an advisory sent to the chief secretaries and director general of police on Wednesday, the ministry noted, “It has been brought to our notice through an application in the Supreme Court that FIRs are still being lodged by some police authorities under the struck down provision of Section 66A of the IT Act, 2000. Hon’ble Supreme Court has taken a very serious view of the matter.”
The ministry urged to the chief secretaries and director general of police to instruct every police stations not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the IT Act and sensitize the law enforcement agencies for the compliance of the Supreme Court order. It stated, “If any cases have been booked in your state under Section 66A of the IT Act, it should be immediately withdrawn.”
The Supreme Court have termed the Section 66A “open-ended and unconstitutionally vague”. It further underlined nothing short of quashing the law in its entirety could suffice since the provision is “arbitrarily, excessively and disproportionately” invaded the right to free speech, right to dissent, right to know and also had a ‘chilling effect’ on constitutional mandates.
This Section 66A criminalized “grossly offensive” or “menacing characters” messages that are sent in the form of images, video, audio, text or by any other electronic record.
According to Hindustan Times report, after the Section was struck down in March 2015, 332 cases were filed under it in the same year. In the next year 2016, 216 cases were registered following 290 in 2017, 318 in 2018, 253 in 2019 and 34 till February 2020 .
