No free speech online, legal action against the perpetrators

Hyderabad: Despite repeated references about how the social media is a public forum and everybody is entitled to their opinions, the fundamental right of freedom of expression is constantly violated.

The recent murder of an engineer in Pune in a suspected hate crime over alleged derogatory pictures and posts on on a social networking website has dismayed the online community.

There were widespread protests and violence that ultimately resulted in the techie’s death, who apparently had not published the posts in the first place. His ID was hacked and the posts had come from a computer, the IP address of which was traced to another country.

Students, techies and experts have been flooding Twitter and Facebook protesting the hate crime and calling for legal action against the perpetrators.

Meena Kandasamy, a poet and a human rights activist, said, “So, offensive Facebook posts can mean signing your own death warrant.”  

An Arts student from Hyderabad added, “Tolerance levels have fallen so badly that it just takes an FB post to kill someone. And in this case, he did not even post it. I do not wish to be part of a society where people cannot live with each other’s perspectives in harmony.”

A group of men, supposedly belonging to the Hindu Rashtra Sena, a right wing outfit in Maharashtra, beat the software engineer to death on Monday over alleged derogatory Facebook posts pertaining to Chhatrapati Shivaji and Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray.

Psychiatrists credit this to the blind influence of mob psychology. Purnima Nagaraja, consultant psychiatrist at the Dhriti Psychological Wellness Centre, said, “This state of mind is referred to as cognitive dissonance, a state of extreme anxiety and anger that arise from conflicting views to such an extent that people become irrational and the ones with the same belief form a mob, become strong and hold one core belief. Their minds function under the influence of one such opinion and anyone going against popular belief will be treated as a traitor.”

Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer, who specialises in cyber laws and crime, said, “Come what may, difference of perspective does not warrant the use of force or violence.  The IT Act does not deal with these scenarios because it never envisaged that people could be murdered. If the account was hacked and this is proved, then it comes under the IT Act, but is a bailable offence. We need to regulate the law further and these cases reiterate the need for making the law more stringent.”