The Supreme Court has done well to restore individual rights – with a few caveats thrown in. While granting bail to a BJP worker, Priyanka Sharma, arrested for allegedly posting a morphed image of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the social media under a disputed section of the IT Act, it has asked the worker to apologise on the same platform, where the morphed photo had first appeared – the Facebook.

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Call it poetic justice. In doing so, the apex court re-laid the red lines about free speech, which is by no means seamless. Freedom of speech ends when it infringes upon others’ rights, was the apex court’s sage observation. The court spelled out the ground rules for those, who use social media as an excuse to trample upon individual rights, throwing accountability to the winds.

Priyanka Sharma, the alleged victim of official high-handedness, the court ruled, will apologise for posting the morphed picture of the West Bengal Chief Minister. The bench observed that although freedom of speech is non-negotiable, but “your freedom of speech ends when it infringes upon others’ rights”.

In a significant statement made on behalf of human rights, the court also issued notice to the West Bengal Police over the way the BJP activist was taken into custody. Frankly, this should be considered a landmark judgment in some ways. It touches upon a subject, which is bothering civil society the most.

Can anyone post anything on the social media and get away with it? While there are defamation laws – however weak – that deal with content in the electronic and the print media, and also laid down ground rules on what can be shown or published, social media is well beyond the purview of any law.

It is not easy to impose laws on a form of media, which is relatively new, unknown, and takes empowerment to another level. This topic though, has attracted the focus of the apex court for a long time. In 2015, it struck down Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Pronouncing their verdict on a PIL filed against the Section, which empowers the police to arrest a person for allegedly posting ‘offensive material’ on social networking sites, the court ruled that the section violated the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and was therefore illegal.

Terming liberty of thought and expression as “cardinal”, the Bench said: “The public’s right to know is directly affected by Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act.” Despite such explicit observations, the West Bengal Police still decided to go ahead and press charges, is tantamount to contempt of court. Of course, the police could have hardly stated that they were under orders by the state government to do so. Still, there can be no excuses about slapping a section that has been ruled invalid by the highest court in the land. By asking the victim to issue an apology, it has done well to assuage feelings on both sides.