The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed that no citizen could be prosecuted under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which was scrapped in 2015, and struck down all pending cases under the section.

“Those cases where the alleged violations have been projected and citizens were facing prosecution for alleged violation of the law, the reference and relation upon the said section from all the crime or criminal proceedings shall stand deleted,” Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit said in an order.

Under Section 66A, a person posting offensive content on the Internet could be imprisoned for up to three years and also fined.

The court clarified on Wednesday that the order for deletion would apply only to those cases where the citizens had been booked under Section 66A of the IT Act. In cases where both Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 66A offences have been invoked against a person, only Section 66A would stand deleted and the other IPC offences would continue.

The bench headed by Justice Lalit issued a slew of directives and asked directors-general of police, home secretaries of states and competent authorities in the Union Territories to pass necessary instructions to police to not book any further cases against citizens under the impugned provisions.

The bench, which included Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Ajay Rastogi, passed the directives on a petition filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), which brought to the court’s notice the continued misuse of Section 66A despite it being struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India case in 2015.

At the last hearing, the court had sought from the Centre an all-India status report on pending cases under Section 66A in a tabular form.

On Wednesday, the bench observed that the information placed before it by the Centre’s counsel suggested that despite the 2015 ruling on Section 66A, a number of criminal proceedings still relied upon this provision and citizens were still facing prosecution.

“Such criminal proceedings, in our view, are directly in the teeth of the directions issued by this court in the Shreya Singhal vs Union of India (March 2015 judgment),” the bench said.

On March 24, 2015, the apex court had struck down Section 66A as unconstitutional after hearing a PIL filed by law student Shreya Singhal and the PUCL challenging the provision as a grave violation of the fundamental right to free speech and liberty.

In 2017, the PUCL filed a petition in the Supreme Court alleging prosecution of people under the scrapped provision.

The PUCL said several petitions had been filed in various high courts by accused persons for quashing the cases pending against them in trial courts as neither the subordinate judiciary nor the prosecutors had bothered to terminate the proceedings.

“…It is apparent that trial courts and prosecutors are not actively implementing the decision of this Hon’ble Court, and the burden of terminating illegal prosecutions based on Section 66A of the IT Act is unfairly falling upon accused persons. Thus, compliance with the Constitution has been made primarily dependent on the means of individual accused persons, potentially rendering justice beyond the reach of accused persons without means to afford quality legal counsel.

“It sends a message that in spite of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India having declared a provision unconstitutional, the enjoyment of basic fundamental rights by ordinary citizens remains subject to wanton abuse by police, and sheer ignorance of law within the legal system,” the petition stated.

'Cops don't care'

Ambikesh Mahapatra. Sourced by The Telegraph

Ambikesh Mahapatra, a Jadavpur University chemistry professor who had been arrested in 2012 for forwarding an Internet joke lampooning chief minister Mamata Banerjee and was slapped with Section 66A of the Information Technology Act by the state government, spoke to Subhankar Chowdhury of The Telegraph on Wednesday night.

Excerpts:

“Even after the court had struck down the act in 2015, police held on to the cases filed under Section 66A till July 2021. After the Supreme Court started asking question about the trials, the Alipore Criminal Court in September last year came out with an order. The court discharged me from the act but did not discharge me from the case that is premised on the act. I have challenged this order in a higher court.

“My experience has been that the police stations hardly care what the Supreme Court says. They act according to the desire of the state governments which seek to silence the voice of the Opposition by any means.”