Six controversial arrests made under Section 66A

Delivering a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court benched by J Chelameswar and R F Nariman, quashed the Section 66A of Information Technology Act, which allowed the arrest of a person for posting "offensive content" online.

R F Nariman said, "The public's right to know is directly affected by section 66A of the Information Technology Act." The bench also added "What may be offensive to a person may not be offensive to the other".

Here is a list of a few controversial arrests made under Section 66A

1) Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor of physical chemistry, was arrested in April 2012,   along with the secretary of the housing society where he lived, for sending a cartoon strip based on Satyajit Ray’s detective masterpiece on  celluloid “Sonar Kella.” The cartoon showed Mamata Banerjee and Railways Minister Mukul  Roy discussing how to get rid of Trinamool’s Dinesh Trivedi, whom Mamata had removed as the Railway Minister. Read it here.


2) Aseem Trivedi, a political cartoonist was arrested in September 2012, for drawing  an allegedly derogatory sketch and uploading it on his web portal.  Read it  here.



3) Ravi Srinivasan was arrested in October 2012 on the charge of posting "offensive"  messages on social media targeting Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's son  Karti Chidambaram. Read it here.



4) Dalit thinker Kanwal Bharti was arrested in August 2013 for posting a message on  Facebook criticizing the Akhilesh Yadav government for the suspension of the IAS  officer and its failure on the law and order front. Read it here.



5)Two girls were arrested in Mumbai in November 2012, for their Facebook post questioning the shutdown in the city for Bal Thackeray's funeral. Read it here.

6)  And recently, a class XII student was arrested for allegedly uploading a  controversial post attributed to senior UP minister Azam Khan on Facebook.
 Read it  here.