Bharti Airtel has been directed to pay Rs2 lakh as compensation to a Bangalore-based techie for providing wrong information to the police that led to his arrest in 2007.
The Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission has directed Bharti Airtel to pay Rs2 lakh as compensation to a Bangalore-based techie for providing wrong information to the police that led to his arrest in 2007.
The story of Lakshamana Kailash’s arrest smacks of all that can go wrong with an investigation. Kailash spent 50 horrifying days in a Pune jail after he was arrested by the police on the basis of information provided by Bharti Airtel regarding the Internet protocol (IP) address used to create a profile on Orkut defaming Shivaji. The Commission, which took up the case suo motu after reading newspaper reports, found that Bharti Airtel provided wrong information to the police on the IP address as they made a mistake in the time for which the information was sought. The 12-hour time difference for information provided led to the arrest of the wrong person.
“In our opinion, the company 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 used the IP address in the morning instead of night,” The Commission noted in its June order.
The case dates back to November 2006, when a BJP worker filed a complaint with the Pune police regarding an objectionable profile titled, “Impotent Shivaji”, created on orkut. He complained that the profile contained obscene pictures and objectionable text.
Google provided the police with a yahoo e-mail id used to create the profile. The police sought information from yahoo as well as Bharti Airtel, which was the internet-service provider.
On the basis of information provided by Bharti Airtel, Kailash was arrested on September 1, 2007. Subsequently, when yahoo provided its independent information, the three real culprits were arrested on October 3, 2007. Despite arresting the real culprits, it was only on October 20, 2007 that the police filed an application to release Kailash.
Kailash, a senior software engineer with an MNC in Bangalore, claimed to have been physically and mentally tortured in jail, sought Rs20 crore in compensation. The commission noted that Kailash, “who was used to clean toilets, good nutritious food and peaceful sleep” was deprived of his liberty and had suffer all this for a crime he never committed.
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