BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court upheld the sessions court order discharging a Mysuru youth from a case of forgery of electronic record and defamation, registered by the office of the then President Prathibha Patil, for allegedly creating her fake profile on orkut.com.Dismissing recently the criminal revision petition filed by the Economic Offences Wing Police Station, New Delhi, against the sessions court order, Justice KS Mudagal said proceedings against the accused only on the basis of the IP address was futile. The sessions court was wholly justified in holding that there were no grounds to proceed against the accused Avinash R Kashyap, she added.
The prosecution contended that the accused created a false profile of the President. But the FSL report, which is part of the chargesheet records, disclosed that necessary data was not found in the hard disk of his computer.Counsel for the accused contended that as per the chargesheet, the broadband connection was given to the accused on July 7, 2007, whereas the alleged profile was created on June 30, 2007, before Prathibha Patil was appointed President on July 25, 2007. Merely on the basis of IP address, the accused cannot be connected to the crime.
Barun Mitra, Joint Secretary, filed a complaint on February 26, 2009, before the DCP (Security), Rashtrapati Bhavan, alleging that somebody has mischievously created a false profile of the President on Orkut. The contents of the profile were objectionable, defamatory and lowered the dignity of the President.
The petition was filed before the high court, praying to set aside the order dated January 22, 2016, passed by Additional District and Sessions Judge, Bengaluru Rural District, which discharged the accused.