Binod Sitaram Agarwal v. State of Maharashtra
In the High Court of Bombay
Criminal Bail Appl No. 3027 of 2018
Before Justice Prakash D. Naik
Decided on January 21, 2018

Relevancy of the case: Bail application in a case involving Section 66C and 70.

Statutes & Provisions Involved

• The Information Technology Act, 2000 (Section 43, 66C, 70)
• The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (Section 408)

Relevant Facts of the Case

• This is an application for bail. The applicant was arrested in connection with crimes under Sections 43 and 66C of the Information Technology Act 2000. Section 70 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and Section 408 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 were added while filing the charge-sheet.
• The complainant is the Assistant Development Commissioner with M/s. Seepz, Sez in Mumbai. Seepz, Sez is a Central Project which provides financial assistance to Special Economic Zones.
• The Deputy Development Commissioner uses email id – ddcseepz-mah@nic.in which is used for carrying out day-to-day affairs of the undertaking. The said email-id is used by the Deputy Development Commissioner or a person authorized by him.
• In the past, there has been an instance wherein the Deputy Development Commissioner had informed the Development Commissioner that his official email-id had been misused by some unknown person.
• Directions were issued for inquiry in this regard. During the investigation, it was noted that that the IP addresses of Gio Infocom Company were found to be suspicious and were reported to Seepz with a view to submitting the complaint to the concerned police station.
• It is further alleged that the applicant had hacked and accessed the email address of the Deputy Development Commissioner of Seepz. Thus, the applicant was arrested.

 Prominent Arguments by the Advocates

The applicant’s counsel:

• The applicant has been falsely implicated in this case since the applicant had made complaints against corruption in the said office against the concerned persons and in retaliation, an F.I.R. was registered against him.

The public prosecutor:

• The applicant was appointed under a contract by the company as an IT professional which stated that the appointee shall not divulge the confidential information in any manner to any person who is not authorized to do so and shall limit the access of the confidential information only to the people authorized to do so. It was mentioned in the contract that this shall continue to apply even after the termination or expiry of the contract. Thus, the applicant took undue advantage of the situation.

Opinion of the Bench

• The F.I.R. was lodged against unknown persons. While lodging the F.I.R., Section 43 and 66C of the Information Technology Act, 2000 were invoked.
• Section 43 relates to penalty and compensation, damage to the computer, computer system etc. This provision further mentions that whoever breaches the provisions is liable to pay damages by way of compensation to the person so affected. Section 66C provides for punishment for identity theft. It states that whoever fraudulently or dishonestly makes use of the electronic signature, password or any other unique identification feature of any other person shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall so be liable to fine which may extend to one lakh.
• During the course of the investigation, Section 70 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 was also invoked. The section relates to the protected system. The invocation of the above section requires determining a particular system as a protected system and should be notified. The charge-sheet does not contain any such notification.

Final Decision

• Further custody of the applicant is not necessary. The bail application is allowed.

This case summary has been prepared by Aditya Nair, a postgraduate student at NLIU, Bhopal, during his Internship with The Cyber Blog India in June/July 2020.