Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has observed that liking a social media post does not amount to transmitting or publishing it, and will not attract Section 67 of the Information Technology Act which deals with obscene and objectionable material.
The observation was made by Justice Saurabh Srivastava while quashing criminal proceedings against one Imran Khan of Agra.
“Even otherwise, from the material on record, it appears that no message which could be provocative in nature is available on record and merely liking a message will not attract penalty u/s 67 of I.T. Act or any other criminal offence,” the court added.
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The court was dealing with an application filed under section 482 (inherent powers of the high court) under CrPC.
The petitioner had moved to court seeking quashing of a case against him for liking a post by one Chaudhari Farhan Usman.
Usman’s post referred to a protest gathering that would be assembling near the collectorate to hand over a memorandum to the President of India.
Khan was booked for “provocative messages on social media, which resulted in the assembly of about 600-700 persons belonging to the Muslim community for arranging a procession without permission.”
Quashing the proceedings, the court had also observed, “Even otherwise Section 67 of the I.T. Act is for obscene material and not for provocative material”.
The words “lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest” mean relating to sexual interest and desire, therefore, Section 67 I.T. Act does not prescribe any punishment for other provocative material,” the court said.
During the course of hearing, the applicant’s counsel had submitted that even no such content was found on his Facebook account. However, the police said he had deleted the same but similar content was found on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.
From the material on record, the court found that Khan had merely liked a message published by another person and no offence was made out against him.
“Having heard the counsel for the applicant and having perused the record, I do not find any material which could connect the applicant with any objectionable post, as there is no offensive post available in the Facebook and Whatsapp accounts of the applicant,” the court said in its order passed on Thursday last.
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