New cyber laws not enough to curb cyber crimes

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 23 January 2009, 01:07 IST   |    3 Comments
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New Delhi: The proposed modification in Indian cyber laws is seemingly incapable of restricting cyber crimes in the country. Intending to eliminate such crimes, the Indian parliament had amended the IT Act recently, which classifies crimes such as introducing viruses, cyber stalking, defamation, impersonation and stealing passwords, pin numbers or other access codes, as bailable offences. Experts say that by converting these kinds of crimes from non-bailable to bailable offences category, the government has actually relaxed the laws of some common cyber crimes, reported The Economic Times. Since 1995, when internet was made commercially available in India, only three convictions have been taken place in India. One conviction was for a credit card fraud and two others were for pornography. "Cyber crimes against persons and property have been made bailable. It will be difficult now to convict cyber criminals under the IT Act," said cyber law expert Pavan Duggal. As per the new rule, hacking will be coming under the ambit of computer-related offences that are bailable, while the original legislation had stipulated jail term up to three years and Rs 2 lakh fine for this crime. In this sense, a criminal released on bail can just delete all electronic records and go scot-free. OP Vaish, Managing Partner at Vaish Associates, a law firm, opines that hacking is a serious offence that needs to be strictly punishable as there could be serious consequences to the crime. The non-bailable crimes under the new rule are cyber terrorism and child pornography. "The law has dealt severely with sections relating to child pornography and cyber terrorism. But it has many loopholes with regard to addressing the data protection concerns of our international clients which outsource to India," mentioned Salman Waris, Partner at law firm Fox Mandal.