NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday expressed shock that people were still being booked under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act that was scrapped by it in 2015.
Under the said section, a person posting offensive messages could be imprisoned for up to three years as also fined.
“Shreya Singhal judgment is of 2015…It’s really shocking. What’s going on is terrible,” a three-judge Bench led by Justice RF Nariman said.
Advocate Sanjay Parikh, representing the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), said despite directions issued by the court in 2019 that all state governments should sensitise police personnel about the judgment, thousands of cases had been registered under the scrapped provision.
“We have seen those figures. Don’t worry we will do something,” said the Bench, which issued a notice to the Centre, asking it to reply in two weeks.
Attorney General KK Venugopal told the Bench that on a perusal of the Act, it could be seen that Section 66A featured in it. However, the footnote made it clear that the provision had been scrapped.
“When a cop has to register a case, he sees the section without going through the footnote. We can put a bracket after the section to mention it has been scrapped,” he said.