JOIN USWhen a would-be lawyer Shreya Singhal walked into the Supreme Court to file a petition seeking the scrapping of Section 66A, she might not have imagined that it would come this way.
However, at the first hearing itself on November 29, 2012, she had reasons to be optimistic about the outcome as then Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said: “We were wondering why no one has approached the Supreme Court over this and even thought of taking up the issue suo motu.”
Law and courts were not new for her – her mother is a Supreme Court lawyer while her grandmother Sunanda Bhandare was a judge.
She struck at the idea of approaching the court on Section 66A after the arrest of two young girls – Shaheen Dhada and Rinu Srinivasan – who questioned the shut down in Mumbai following the death of Bal Thackeray.
Shreya had just returned from Britain after a three-year course in astrophysics and was looking at admissions into law schools when she found a cause to fight.
Her family encouraged her on taking on the matter. Her mother Manali guided her through the legal formalities.
She knows the importance of the judgement.
“It is a big victory. No one should fear not putting something up due to a fear of jail. There are other provisions in IT act, if there is a hate speech, you will be dealt under those provisions,” she said on Tuesday.