In what is a rather worrying development, the Tamil Nadu government has announced that it will make amendments to its existing Goondas Act to include cyber crimes, reports TheHindu. Why is this worrying? After the amendment, offenders will face detention and those put behind bars under this provision can't obtain bail for a year. Currently, the Goondas Act includes prevention of dangerous activities of bootleggers, drug offenders, forest offenders, goondas, immoral traffic offenders, sand offenders, slum grabbers and video pirates act, 1982. The Goondas act can be invoked for habitual offenders. Once the amendments are made it can be invoked even for first time offenders or a single offence that has the propensity to disturb public peace, according to a report by NDTV. The nature of of cyber crimes that will warrant detention under the Act has not been defined yet, but any offence or offences targeting a larger segment of innocent people with intent to commit fraud or endanger their safety would be considered serious enough for detention under the Goondas Act. The propensity of the Central Government has so far has been to put in provisions that curtail freedom of speech, and allow law enforcement to jail citizens for statements that they find offensive. This has led to much criticism (including from us), and it's interesting that this move by the Tamil Nadu government comes at a time when the home ministry and IT department are reportedly working on softening the IT Act with graded responses for cyber crimes involving teens and first-time offenders. The report stated that…
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