Court case(2015) 5 SCC 1

Two young women were arrested in Maharashtra in 2012 under section 66A of the Information Technology Act for a Facebook post and a 'like' criticising a city shutdown after a political leader's death. Section 66A punished sending by computer any information that was 'grossly offensive', 'menacing', or sent to cause 'annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will'. Law student Shreya Singhal and others challenged the section under Article 32.

Nariman J struck down section 66A in its entirety. Freedom of speech protects three stages, discussion, advocacy and incitement; only incitement may be restricted. The section had no proximate relation to public order, defamation, incitement to an offence or any other ground in Article 19(2): causing 'annoyance' or 'inconvenience' is not a constitutional ground, and the section covered innocent speech with no tendency to disorder. Its terms were so vague that neither the citizen nor the authority could know what was prohibited, and its overbreadth chilled legitimate speech; the assurance that it would be administered fairly could not save it. Section 69A, which permits blocking of online content with written reasons and procedural safeguards, was upheld. Section 79(3)(b) was read down so that an intermediary must remove content only on receiving a court order or a government notification on a ground within Article 19(2).