Indian portal's director moves HC over obscenity charge

A director of the website rediff.com has moved the Bombay High Court to quash a criminal complaint which alleges that the website, through the search engine linked to it, disseminates obscene material.

A lower court had issued process against rediff.com and its directors in the case despite a report by experts that for a search engine it would be impossible to censor the results of any search.

The high court is scheduled to hear the case after two weeks. Petitioner Sunil N Phatarphekar is one of the non-executive directors of rediff.com.

Abhinav Bhatt, a law student based in Pune, filed a complaint with a magistrate's court in June 2000, saying rediff.com has committed an offence under section 292 of the Indian Penal Code (selling and distributing obscene material).

His contention was that if one were to type words such as "sexual intercourse" in the search window on rediff.com's homepage, it threw up links to pornographic websites.

The judicial magistrate in Pune sought the opinion of internet experts from Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) in the case. According to the petitioner, the VSNL report clearly said rediff.com itself did not host any pornographic material.

Further, the report said no contemporary technology could stop pornographic websites from showing up in search results.

Despite this, the magistrate in November 2000 issued process against Phatarpekar and other non-executive as well executive directors of rediff.com.

The magistrate held that "prima facie an offence has been made out".

The petitioner in the high court contended that regulating search results is not possible and "the law does not expect a person to do what is not possible... There is no centralised storage, location or control point of the internet. A search engine won't be able to identify the content of websites. It can't make a human or subjective judgement."

Further, the Information Technology Act, too, says an internet service provider is not liable for "third party" data made available by it, the petition pointed out.

Government pleader S Pednekar said that though the government is yet to formulate its reply to the petition, the matter assumes significance due to wider penetration of the internet in recent years.