{"id":210334,"date":"2022-10-13T19:10:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=210334"},"modified":"2022-10-13T19:10:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:40:42","slug":"no-more-indictment-under-section-66a-of-it-act-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/no-more-indictment-under-section-66a-of-it-act-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"No more indictment under Section 66A of IT Act: Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>: The post is based on the article\u00a0<strong>\u201cNo more indictment under Section 66A of IT Act: Supreme Court\u201d <\/strong>published in<b> The Hindu <\/b>on <strong>13<sup>th <\/sup>October 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h5>What is the News?<\/h5>\n<p>The Supreme Court ordered States and their police forces to stop prosecuting free speech on social media under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act which was declared unconstitutional by the court in a judgment seven years ago.<\/p>\n<h5>What is Section 66A of the IT Act?<\/h5>\n<table style=\"border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 100%;\"><strong>Read here: <a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/section-66-a-of-the-it-act\/\">Section 66 A of the IT Act<\/a><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Section 66A had prescribed three years\u2019 imprisonment if a social media message caused \u201cannoyance\u201d or was found \u201cgrossly offensive\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The SC has struck down Section 66A as \u201cvague\u201d and \u201cchilling\u201d. But despite that the police continued to pick out people and prosecute them under the Section. The court found this as <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/distressing-and-shocking-that-people-are-still-tried-under-section-66a-of-it-act-says-sc\/\">\u201cdistressing\u201d and &#8220;shocking.&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h5>What did the SC say about section 66A?<\/h5>\n<p>The court held that &#8220;all Directors General of Police as well as Home Secretaries of the States and competent officers in Union Territories to instruct their entire police force in their respective States\/Union Territories not to register any complaint of crime with respect to alleged violation of Section 66A&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, the court clarified that this direction would apply only to a charge under Section 66A and not extend to other offences in a case.<\/p>\n<table style=\"border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 100%;\"><strong>Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/onus-on-states-to-implement-supreme-court-order-quashing-section-66a\/\">Onus on states to implement Supreme Court order quashing Section 66A<\/a><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cNo more indictment under Section 66A of IT Act: Supreme Court\u201d published in The Hindu on 13th October 2022. What is the News? The Supreme Court ordered States and their police forces to stop prosecuting free speech on social media under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/no-more-indictment-under-section-66a-of-it-act-supreme-court\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No more indictment under Section 66A of IT Act: Supreme Court<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1760,9],"tags":[10498],"class_list":["post-210334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-polity-and-nation","category-public","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}