‘My mother was on deathbed, but police did not stop grilling me’

A day after the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as unconstitutional, 33-year-old Maloya resident Satish Kumar recalled his harrowing experience after having been booked under it last month.

A day after the Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as unconstitutional, 33-year-old Maloya resident Satish Kumar recalled his harrowing experience after having been booked under it last month.

The case against him was registered on February 7 by the Sector-11 police under Section 66A of IT Act for sending allegedly vulgar messages to a Panjab University female student on Facebook. He said the SC judgment had now “brought relief for many innocent people like me”. Claiming he was falsely implicated by police, Satish Kumar said he was called by the UT cybercrime cell in February, saying he had posted some vulgar messages on a social media website, Facebook.

He was arrested on February 13 and later bailed out.

Requesting cops that he did not know any PU girl, and that he had not posted any message on FB, he told cops that someone might have “misused”his mobile phone. Explaining further, he said though his mother’s kidneys were damaged and she was being treated, he still had to visit the cyber crime cell. “She was on deathbed but they did not spare me,”he said.

Satish said though he did not know anything about the case his mobile was seized by the cyber cell.

Around 17 cases were registered under the Section 66A in Chandigarh since 2009, whereas in around 41 cases 66A was used with other provisions. While two cases were registered in 2009, there was none in 2010, two in 2011, seven in 2012, five in 2013, none last year, and only one this year. In one such case last year, police had booked Kulbhushan Singla, 55, a Sector-19 resident, Panchkula, under 66A of the IT Act at Sector-34 police station on December 29.

Police said a 40-year-old woman, a resident of Sector 45, had lodged a complaint with the police, alleging he had sent vulgar SMS to her.

During the investigation, it came to the fore that the woman had some business rivalry with someone in Panchkula, who was the neighbour of the alleged accused, where she came in contact of him.

Meanwhile, senior superintendent of police Sukhchain Singh Gill said most of the cases were either in the court or untraced, but the cases under investigation were being probed.