Mumbai: Even as the country debates the arrest of the two girls who were picked for their comments on late Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray on Facebook, here's another case. Two Air India employees were arrested under the same IT Act for criticising Supreme Court orders.
Charges against the two girls in Palghar have been dropped after an enquiry showed misuse of the IT Act. But the two Air India cabin crew members have not been so lucky. KVJ Rao and Mayank Sharma were arrested in May 2012 for allegedly posting derogatory remarks against the Supreme Court in a closed online group for Air India employees. They, too, allege that the IT act was misused in their case.
But the man who filed the case against them, a trade union leader, insisted that he was justified in seeking police action. Air India union leader Sagar Karnik said, "I first approached the websites and reported abuse and sought for removal of the posts, but the websites said I will have to approach the local police for the same."
The case, though, once again highlights several issues. For instance:
- When does an online comment amount to just civil defamation, and when does it become false or offensive message as defined by section 66 A of the IT act?
- IT law does not clearly define 'offensive' or 'menacing' messages, so what guidelines can the police use to apply apply these sections?
- Is the IT law increasingly being used to settle personal scores?
Be it the case of P Chidambaram's son Karti, the two Palghar girls or the Air India crew members, internet users are increasingly getting a message that they have to be wary of what they post. But the question really is as to who decides and how on where to draw the line between freedom of expression and offensiveness.
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Air India is the flag carrier airline of India. It is part of the government of India owned Air India Limited (AIL).
The airline operates a fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft serving Asia, Europe and North America. Its corporate office is lo ...
Bal Keshav Thackeray (1926-2012), popularly known as Balasaheb Thackeray, is the founder and chief of the Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist, Marathi ethnocentric and populist party active mainly in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
He sta ...
Facebook is a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also a ...
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