Wronged, techie gets justice 2 yrs after being jailed Lakshmana Kailash K was jailed after ISP wrongly gave his name to cops looking for man who put up defamatory articles of a historical figure on a social networking site; police detained him for 50 days despite realising mistake By Anand Holla Posted On Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 03:14:45 AM Lakshmana Kailash K has now been awarded a Rs 2 lakh compensation by the State Human Rights Commission Almost two years after he was wrongly jailed for 50 days, Lakshmana Kailash K, a Bangalore-based software engineer, has finally seen justice. Criticising the police investigation and the Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) ‘misleading information’ that led to his imprisonment, the State Human Rights Commission has ordered the company to pay Rs 2 lakh to Lakshmana as damages. Lakshmana was arrested from his Bangalore home – in the wee hours of August 31, 2007 – by the Pune police for uploading insulting pictures and text pertaining to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on Orkut, a social networking site. The 28-year-old spent the next 50 days in Pune’s Yerawada jail, for no fault of his. The goof up It all began when investigating officer, ACP Netaji Shinde of the Pune Cyber Crime Branch (now retired), sought help from the ISP, Bharti Airtel, Bangalore, seeking information on the vital IP address. The IP address is a number by which a machine can be identified on the network. The ISP, however, due to a mix-up in the time, handed over the wrong address to the police, thus leading to the arrest of Lakshmana. A bench of Justice Kshitij Vyas and Retired IAS officer Subhash Lalla, took suo-motu cognisance of the case from The Times of India story, and Ketan Tanna, who reported the incident, filed an affidavit ascertaining his story to be authentic. Bharti Airtel, in its defence, pleaded that it provided an incorrect IP address, due to an ‘AM-PM’ goof-up. It said that Shinde – in his communication to the cyber crime unit – didn’t indicate the logging time as “1:11:57 am or pm”, but only “01:11:57 GMT”. “A small change in AM or PM, that is, the time component in the IP address, changed the entire complexion of the information,” the company argued. Claiming that they had no role to play in the violation of Lakshmana’s human rights, Bharti Airtel said that the police acted with negligence. However, the commission held that both Shinde and Airtel ‘tried to prove their innocence and blamed each other’. The ruling The bench noted that if Airtel was confused over the AM and PM, it could have sought particulars instead of providing wrong information. “Airtel officials misled the police by providing wrong information. They did not care to check whether the requested time was AM or PM, and gave details of the victim who had used the same IP address at 01:11:57 am, whereas the derogatory remarks were posted at 01:11:57 pm. The AM, PM discrepancies cannot be a ground to absolve the company. It was expected from the company to take a little care to verify whether it has provided the correct information… We hold that Airtel is responsible for providing false information to the police, which led to Lakshmana’s arrest,” the bench stated. Remarking on Shinde’s investigation as being riddled with ‘serious errors’, the commission said that the ACP should have sought further proof before arresting Lakshmana. The bench, however, did not order any action against the now retired Shinde, but left it to the state government to hold an enquiry against him. Shinde has practically little knowledge and experience of cyber crimes, the commission ruled, recommending that the government “review existing policies and allow only those officers with expertise and knowledge about cyber crimes, to investigate such crimes”. The commission concluded that Lakshmana had to endure a lot of pain and suffering due to the acts of both the company and police authorities. In jail, Lakshmana was given a bowl in which he had to eat and drink, and even take to the loo. As a result of the stress, he lost 12 kilos; his kidney stone problem was aggravated; and his liver got enlarged. However, the commission turned down Lakshmana’s compensation claim of Rs 20 crores, ordering a ‘reasonable token amount’ of Rs 2 lakh to be paid as damages by Airtel. When contacted, Shinde said, “I don’t know anything about the order, and what the commission has observed on me.” An Airtel spokesperson, however, refused to comment on the ruling.

Lakshmana Kailash K has now been awarded a Rs 2 lakh compensation by the State Human Rights Commission