Srinagar: Free speech campaigners and legal experts called out the Jammu and Kashmir administration’s ‘arbitrary use’ of a controversial law to ban the use of virtual private networks (VPN) following the Pahalgam massacre, The Wire reported.
They have accused the government of attacking individual freedoms and the right to information by arbitrarily detaining violators of the ban.
It has emerged that the administration in Doda district of the Chenab valley has taken into custody unknown number of the area’s residents as part of ‘technical surveillance’ for using VPNs.
Doda’s deputy Commissioner Harvinder Singh in an order on May 2 following the Pahalgam massacre placed a ban on VPNs pointing out ‘serious threat to public order, tranquility, and national security’.
The two-month ban on the VPNs was placed—invoking the new version of the controversial section 144 of The Code of Criminal Procedure— under section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS).
As per the law, emergency powers are given to a magistrate to control communication and public movement.
It is reported citing legal experts that VPNs is not illegal in the country.
These experts, according to the report, said that use of section 163 of BNSS, a vestige harking back to colonial times, could undermine the country’s ‘democratic credentials’.
The Doda district police in a statement on May 16 said that ‘several individuals’ were detained for using VPNs to bypass ‘internet restrictions’.
The statement read ‘All detained individuals are currently being questioned, and further legal action shall be initiated as per relevant provisions of the law.’
Nitya Ramakrishnan, senior advocate at the Supreme Court reportedly said that the executive gets ‘blanket and unguided power’ from the section 163 of BNSS, which according Nitya Ramakrishnan ‘by its very terms unconstitutional’.
The senior advocate further said that invoking section 163 use of communication is ‘a frontal violation of individual liberty’, adding that ‘Today’s rhetoric that anything is alright in the name of security is pernicious and is tantamount to saying that any security agency is king. To make the violation worse, the supposed offenders have also been denuded of their liberty’.
Habeel Iqbal, a senior lawyer based in Kashmir, pointed out that the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did not ban the use of VPN under the rules it passed in 2022.
Habeel Iqbal added: ‘The VPN providers only have to store the data for five years. Under the rules, there is no provision for arresting those using VPNs’.