Politicians repeatedly tried to muzzle free speech

The opposition to Section 66A of the Information Technology Act has gathered momentum with every case that was slapped on citizens for criticising or making fun of politicians.

The latest incident of the misuse of Section 66A was the arrest of a teenager for posting comments against Uttar Pradesh minister and senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan. There were at least ten such cases that grabbed national headlines which evoked outrage in the past three years.

The arrests of Shaheen Dhada and Rinu Srinivasan in Maharashtra’s Palghar for a Facebook post questioning the shutdown in Mumbai following Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s death became the trigger for the case in the Supreme Court. The charges against the girls were dropped in December 2012.

Another case that brought to the fore the opposition against the provision was the arrest of Jadavpur University Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra in West Bengal in 2012 for posting a caricature of Chief Mamata Banerjee on Facebook. Then came the case of activist-cartoonist Aseem Trivedi who drew the ire of the political class for his drawings of Parliament and the Constitution that depict their ineffectiveness.

He was arrested on charges of sedition but was acquitted by the Bombay High Court recently.

And in 2012, Mayank Sharma and K V Rao from Mumbai were arrested for posting “offensive” comments against politicians.

Another case was filed by Karti Chidambaram, son of Congress leader P Chidambaram, against businessman Ravi Srinivasan for tweeting that he was corrupt also made it to the headlines.

The latest among them was the arrest of a Class XI student for making a Facebook post about Azam Khan. The family of the boy apologised and Khan agreed to withdraw the case.

This is not the first time Azam Khan is involved in such a case. A government officer was arrested for uploading “objectionable” pictures of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and Khan on Facebook earlier. In August 2013, poet Kanwal Bharti was arrested for a post that criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for suspending IAS officer Durga Nagpal for ordering the demolition of a wall of a mosque.

He said a similar incident happened in Rampur, but no action was taken against officials because Khan controlled the town.

A young professional Devu Chodankar was charged last year for a post on Modi, saying if elected to power, he would unleash a “holocaust”.

He deleted his post and later apologised for his choice of words but stood by his
argument. Police also arrested a CPM worker Rajesh Kumar for posting “abusive” comments on Modi.