Advocate (Dr.) Prashant Mali's Blog

What do we mean by a “right of privacy” in India? Justice Cooley in 1888 defined it simply as a right to be left alone. Alternatively, it may be defined as a right to be anonymous. The two definitions are quite different but both are important, and the right to be anonymous is a form of privacy that has particularly significant implications in cyberspace. In legal terms, our right of privacy amounts to a right to be free from government intrusion into certain areas of our lives and a right to be free from intrusion by other individuals into our “private” lives. The former is protected largely through Constitutional interpretation and a number of statutes; the latter is protected largely through the common law under tort principles. Before 1890 no English or American court had ever granted relief based on such a claim as “invasion of privacy.”  However, in 1890 a Harvard Law Review article by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis examined a number of cases ostensibly decided on othe...

Can a Complainant or Victim fight his own cyber crime case in Magistrates Court or appoint his own lawyer? Note: Normally when one files a police FIR, the case is represented free of cost by the STATE in the courts i.e By Public Prosecutor. Yes !!! He can by himself or through his Expert Legal Counsel or a Lawyer. But he has to file a written application making out a case, so that the magistrate can exercise the jurisdiction as vested in him and form the requisite opinion. A plain reading of Section 301 reveals that though oral submissions before the court cannot be independent of the Prosecutor, a pleader instructed by a private person can definitely file written submissions before the court independent of the Public Prosecutor, if the court so permits. That apart, Sections 301 and 302 cover two different situations. Section 301 envisages a situation where the Public Prosecutor is in charge of a case and a private person instructs his pleader to intervene. In such ca...