Three years after Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, was struck down by the Supreme Court, citizens continue to be “arrested” for allegedly committing offences under this non-existent provision of law. This is not the only provision of law which is grossly misused to arrest citizens for fairly innocuous things like criticising the government, officials or making memes.
Provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) related to sedition (Section 124-A), promoting enmity between groups (153-B), blasphemy (295-A) and causing mischief (Section 505) are some of those favoured by the police to arrest and jail people for simply having a view that someone in a position of power did not like.
Of course, if someone in power really doesn’t like you, there’s always the National Security Act, 1980 which allows the police to detain a person for up to one year… just because.