India's top court strikes down 'offensive' message provision

India's Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a provision that called for the imprisonment of people who send "offensive" messages by computer or cellphone.

Section 66A of the 2008 Information Technology Act, which made sending such messages a crime punishable by up to three years in prison, was challenged by parties including a law student, non-governmental organizations and civil rights groups.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court said the provision was "clearly vague" in not clarifying what should be construed as offensive, and that it violates people's freedom of speech and their right to share information, the Associated Press reported.

Deeming Section 66A unconstitutional, the judges said: "The public's right to know is directly affected," according to the AP.

However, the court upheld a provision that allows the government to block websites "if their content had the potential to create communal disturbance, social disorder or affect India's relationship with other countries," the Times of India reported.

The newspaper reported that Section 66A had been "widely misused" by police to arrest people for posting critical comments about political leaders and social and political issues on social media.

The provision has been invoked in at least 10 recent cases, the AP reported. In 2012, a chemistry professor and his neighbor were arrested for forwarding a cartoon that made fun of Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal's top elected official; while a man was arrested last year for writing on Facebook that the now Prime Minister Narendra Modi would start a holocaust in India if elected to office.

Law student Shreya Singhal was among the first to challenge the provision in 2012. After the ruling, she told NDTV: "I am ecstatic. It was grossly offensive to our rights, our freedom of speech and expression and today the Supreme Court has upheld that."

Other challenges were filed by petitioners including non-governmental organizations and civil rights groups.

Former attorney general Soli J Sorabjee, who represented one of the petitioners, said: "The judgment is well researched, well reasoned and erudite in expression," the Times of India reported. "It is a glorious vindication of freedom of expression."

Former finance and home minister P. Chidambaram welcomed the ruling. He said: "The section was poorly drafted and was vulnerable," the AP reported. "It was capable of being misused and, in fact, it was misused."

Samir Saran, of the New Delhi think tan, Observer Research Foundation, also welcomed the ruling but told the AP that more needs to be done. Referring to the provision that allows the government to block websites, he called for a review to decide the criteria for "why something should be blocked and when it should be blocked."