After his arrest under Sec. 66A, Manoj Oswal waged a grim battle against it

It’s finally light at the end of a very dark tunnel for Pune-based animal rights activist Manoj Oswal.

Like the Palghar girls who were infamously arrested under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act for speaking out against a Shiv Sena bandh on the day of party founder Bal Thackeray’s funeral, Mr. Oswal had a frightening experience when the Pune police knocked on his door in 2011for his “defamatory” posts.

Mr. Oswal had accused Prataprao Pawar (younger brother of NCP chief Sharad Pawar), the Chairman of the Sakal group of newspapers, of illicitly grabbing land on which an animal shelter stood.

He was arrested by the cyber crime cell of the city police on November 25, 2011, and charged under Sections 500 of the Indian Penal Code (Defamation) and Section 66A of the IT Act.

“Certain people called me up and forced me to remove the ‘objectionable’ content from my website but I stood my ground. The next thing I find is the cyber crime police at my doorstep. It was a nightmare,” recounts Mr. Oswal.

After he was released on bail, Mr. Oswal fought long battles against the ‘draconian’ section, contending before five Benches of the Bombay High Court and two Benches of the Supreme Court that Section 66 A was ultra vires of the Constitution.

Mr. Oswal and his lawyers had argued that no further arrests be made or cases filed against those who disclose information in the public domain under 66 A.

Plans re-launch



With the Supreme Court repealing the contentious section, he says he’s happy “that we have been vindicated.” He is planning to re-launch his website that had been shut all this while.

According to police records, Section 66A was invoked in at least 25 instances in Pune last year. Most of the cases have to do with uploading of objectionable pictures of politicians on social media, at times even by the IT cell members of rival political parties.