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A cyber crime forensic expert, who has helped the Kerala police in tracking scores of culprits, contends that the country needs a strong anti-cyber crime law in place of Section 66A of the IT Act which was struck down by the Supreme Court on Tuesday as it violated the freedom of expression.
P Vinod Bhattathiripad, a Kozhikode-based cyber forensic consultant, said that without such a law, the reputations of thousands of people, primarily women, would be at risk.
“Section 66A had a lot of faults mainly in the realm of freedom of expression of the individual,” Bhattathirippad told Business Line . “But, it was a strong weapon against malicious propaganda and attacks on personal reputations of people, especially women.”
He pointed out that the threat of the use of Section 66 A, which could send a cyber criminal to jail for three years, was a strong preventive weapon.
Young people, well-versed in the use of digital space, took pleasure in maligning women by putting up morphed pictures and other stuff.
“Despite the Section, hundreds of women suffered the ignominy caused by morphed pictures posted by these criminals,” he said. “Female actors, models and TV channel anchors are among the main victims of such attack.”
There had been several instances of suicide attempts, marital break-ups and divorces caused by cyber assaults on them.
“True, the Section suffered from a lot of disabilities, but it largely served the purpose of preventing cyber assaults on women,” Bhattathiripad, who holds a doctorate in cyber crime, asserted.
He recalled that a young woman in Kerala had attempted suicide four times in the span of one year following nude-picture exposes by her jilted lover. The man, whose request for marriage the woman had rejected, had posted more than 40,000 pictures and messages that tarnished her image.
“From my professional experience, I would strongly argue for a law to replace the Section with certain changes to take care of freedom of expression,” he said. “If not, in a fast growing cyber world, the scope for maligning individual reputations is extremely vast.”
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