‘Electronic evidence has to be certified’: Man in ‘Prophet post’ case acquitted

Dehradun: A Nainital court has acquitted a man accused of posting derogatory remarks about Prophet Muhammad on a social media platform after holding that the prosecution failed to properly prove the electronic evidence it relied on, leaving the case short of the standard required for conviction.Chief judicial magistrate Ravi Prakash gave Neeraj Kargati the benefit of doubt and said the prosecution did not meet the legal requirement for placing electronic records on file. "When evidence is presented in the form of electronic documents, it must be accompanied by appropriate certification as required under law," the court said in its order on Thursday, adding, "No conclusive finding can be drawn on the charges levelled against the accused."On Oct 19, 2019, Noor Mohammad lodged a complaint at Kotwali police station in Ram Nagar and said that while browsing his Facebook account, he saw Kargati post derogatory comments from his own account. He added that another person later shared the post. Police registered a case under IPC sections 295-A and 153-A and section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act after the complaint triggered an uproar.The prosecution later filed a chargesheet, examined seven witnesses and placed documentary material before the court in support of the charges. Defence counsel attacked the case as false and malicious and said, "The entire prosecution case rests on electronic evidence, but the complainant failed to establish the source of the screenshots."That gap proved crucial in the case. Supreme Court has repeatedly said that when a case relies on screenshots, chats, call records or similar digital material, the prosecution must satisfy Section 65B. In Arjun Panditrao Khotkar v Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal, it said secondary electronic evidence needed a Section 65B(4) certificate unless the original record itself was produced in court. Earlier this month, SC again held that call detail records became inadmissible without a section 65-B certificate, showing how procedural lapses can hurt a prosecution built largely on electronic proof.