New Delhi: With Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan enacting the Kerala Police Law Amendment Ordinance, the Left Front-ruled state police will now have the right to prosecute and imprison people “for doing, expressing, publishing or disseminate any matter that is threatening, abusive, humiliating or defamatory ”through“ any mode of communication ”.
The jail sentence for this crime can be extended to three years.
The ordinance, which was approved by the state cabinet last week, introduces a new section, 118A, of the Kerala Police Law. According to state government officials, the new section is necessary to deal with “crimes committed through social media.”
The specific provision says:
“118 A. Penalty for carrying out, expressing, publishing or disseminating any matter that is threatening, abusive, humiliating or defamatory. abuse, humiliate or defame a person or class of people, knowing that it is false and that it causes damage to the mind, reputation or property of said person or class of people or any other person in whom they have an interest, will be punished with imprisonment for a period that can be extended to three years or with a fine that can be extended to ten thousand rupees or both. “
In 2015, the Supreme Court of the Shreya Singhal case it had repealed Article 66A of the Information Technology Law and Article 118D of the Kerala Police Law, considering that both provisions were unconstitutionally vague and therefore in violation of the right to freedom of expression.
Section 118D of the Kerala Police Act made it a criminal offense for any person to “annoy any person indecently by making verbal statements or comments or by phone calls or calls of any kind or by pursuing or sending messages or emails by any means”, “
The Supreme Court determined that the contested sections outlawed a series of acts if carried out by electronic means, but did not define what terms such as “intimidation”, “threat”, “persecution”, “persistent” actually meant.
Kerala’s new ordinance appears to suffer from the same deficiency, as it is unclear what precisely would constitute a “threatening, abusive, humiliating or defamatory” matter. The police would be left to exercise their discretion and the judges too, in the absence of clarity in the statute, would likely accept the police interpretation.
Rights activist Anoop Kumaran, who had previously been indicted under Section 118D for a Facebook post and challenged the constitutionality of the provision, described the new section, 118A, as even worse than what the Supreme Court had struck down.
The Left Front government says the provision is necessary to prevent cyber-attacks against women and children, but it is unclear why existing legal provisions covering threats or intimidation cannot apply to the same acts committed by electronic means.
Opposition parties have argued that the amendment will give more power to the police and will also restrict freedom of the press, a charge that was rejected by Prime Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who said the decision had been made on the basis of factors such as abuse of social networks. to tarnish the image of individuals.
Expressing concern about the rise in the crime graph, false propaganda and hate speech on social media since the COVID-19 outbreak, the LDF government had said that since cyberattacks are a major threat to life private, it has been decided to amend the Police Law as the legal provisions in force are inadequate to combat these crimes.
He said that while the Supreme Court had struck down section 66-A of the Information Technology Act and section 118 (d) of the Kerala Police Act as being against freedom of expression, the Center it has not introduced any other legal framework.
“In this scenario, the police cannot effectively deal with crimes committed through social media,” the government had said.
(With PTI inputs)
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