-The Indian Express Adopting a fresh stance, the government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it was willing to take a re-look at Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which empowers Police to make arrests over social media messages, and to put in necessary safeguards for allaying apprehensions against its misuse. The government assured the court that it was for the complete freedom of expression on the social media and...
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About men -Vani S Kulkarni, Manoj K Pandey & Raghav Gaiha
-The Indian Express Although the prevalence of sexual violence in India is the lowest in the world (8.5 per cent in 2013), it affects 27.5 million women in the country. Rapes reported to the Police as sexual violence surged from 39 per day to 93 per day in 2013. In Uttar Pradesh alone, five rapes occurred in 36 hours. Even these are underestimations, for two reasons. One is the exclusion of...
More »309 reasons why -Rajeev Dhavan
-The Indian Express The Union government has decided to decriminalise suicide. A funny interpretation could well be that the Modi government can now commit hara kiri with impunity. But it should be noted that the cases under Section 309, which criminalises suicide, are haphazard, often concealing abetment to murder. Philosophically, it is argued that the right to life includes the right to die without provocation or abetment by anyone else. In a...
More »Boiling over -Madhuparna Das
-The Indian Express The lynching of a tea estate owner in Jalpaiguri last month has stirred up trouble in the already edgy tea gardens of north Bengal, where lockouts, labour unrest and poverty form a volatile mix. It's all quiet at Labour Lines, the workers' quarters of Sonali Tea Estate in Jalpaiguri. It has just been two days since Rajesh Jhunjhunwala, the 45-year-old owner of the tea gardens, was lynched by a...
More »Sec 66A of IT act lacks guidelines, arrests made over social media posts prone to abuse: SC -Utkarsh Anand
-The Indian Express The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which empowers Police to make arrests over social media posts, apparently lacked guidelines on when such power can be exercised and that somebody's "annoyance" was enough in certain cases for invoking the law. "Section 66A does not give any specific guidance on when to invoke it, unlike the provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC)....
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