[x-pubpol] India: IAC volunteer tweets himself into trouble, faces three years in jail

[Joly MacFie]

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/iac-volunteer-tweets-himself-into-trouble-faces-three-years-in-jail/article4051769.ece


By PRISCILLA JEBARAJ

Does a tweet on reports of corruption, sent out to 16 followers, deserve a
possible penalty of three years of imprisonment? The answer seems to be
yes, at least according to Congress leader and Union Finance Minister P.
Chidambaram’s son Karti, who filed a complaint against small-time
Puducherry businessman Ravi Srinivasan, and the Puducherry police which
charged Mr. Srinivasan under Section 66-A of the Information Technology
Act, 2008.

Section 66-A deals with messages sent via computer or communication devices
which may be “grossly offensive,” have “menacing character,” or even cause
“annoyance or inconvenience.” For offences under the section, a person can
be fined and jailed up to three years.

Mr. Srinivasan, a 45-year-old supplier of plastic parts to telecom
companies and a volunteer with India Against Corruption, had on October 20
tweeted from his Twitter account @ravi_the_indian : “got reports that
karthick chidambaram has amassed more wealth than vadra.” Other such tweets
reportedly made references to Mr. P. Chidambaram.

Mr. Srinivasan is however appalled by the reaction his tweet has provoked.
“At 5 a.m. on Tuesday [October 30] morning, I was woken up and pulled out
of my house by CBCID men and told I was under arrest because of my tweets,”
he told *The Hindu*. “My wife and two daughters were in shock. What wrong
have I done?”

The police told him he was being charged because of an e-mail complaint
sent by Mr. Karti Chidambaram to the Inspector General of Police, in which
he accused him of malicious intent to defame a good man. He was produced
before a judicial magistrate and released on bail that evening.

Mr. Chidambaram was out of the country on Wednesday, and remained
unavailable for comment. But he did post a short statement on his own
Twitter account @KartiPC. “Free speech is subject to reasonable
restrictions. I have a right to seek constitutional/legal remedies over
defamatory/scurrilous tweets,” he said to his 3,655 followers. He did not
respond to queries on Twitter.

Mr. Srinivasan — whose Twitter tagline reads: Jai- hind guy, want to see
India as no 1 in every sphere, believer that india can do it — has only
posted 110 tweets in his one and a half years on the microblogging site. He
has a grand total of 16 followers, as of Wednesday evening.

“My tweet refers to reports I read about Karti Chidambaram and Robert Vadra
in the newspapers. It is not even my own opinion. I don’t know what is
defamatory about it,” he said. “When I read the kind of tweets other people
have written on corruption, I do not know why I am being targeted.” He
wondered if his involvement with the IAC, and participation in their
activities in Puducherry, has brought this upon him. In his latest tweet,
he asked the IAC for “moral support.”

Interestingly, on October 22, Mr. Chidambaram had tweeted about a story in *The
Hindu* on the arrest of two people who had allegedly harassed singer
Chinmayi Sripada on Twitter, and were charged under Section 66-A of the IT
Act. Linking to *The Hindu*’s article, Mr. Chidambaram’s tweet added: “food
for thought for you know who! :)”

Activists campaigning for online freedom of speech say this kind of charge
under the IT Act was inevitable, given the ambiguous nature of Section
66-A. Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Bangalore-based Centre for
Internet and Society, says the clause is “overbroad,” “unconstitutional,”
and does not satisfy Article 19 (2) of the Constitution which allows for
restrictions on freedom of speech and expression.

He points out that there is no equivalent law for any offline
communication, whether in verbal or printed format. “If you write a book
that annoys or inconveniences me, even deliberately, I have no civil or
criminal recourse. But if you send an e-mail message, or post a tweet, you
could face three years in jail,” says Mr. Prakash. “That’s higher than the
two-year imprisonment for causing death by negligence.

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