ORDER :

M. Nirmal Kumar, J.

1. The petitioner/accused No. 4 in Cr. No. 528 of 2012 is before this Court to quash an FIR in Cr. No. 528/2012 for the offence under Section 506(i), 668Aof Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 and under Section 4 of Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Women Harassment Act.

2. The petitioner was working as Associate Professor in the National Institute of Fashion Technology and he has been serving there without any bad remarks. The petitioner was on social networking like Twitter, Face book and he always tweet with positive approach for betterment of the society with humanity. The contention of the petitioner is that he tweeted in the network as usual in response to a tweet of 2nd respondent.

3. The gist of the case is that the defacto complainant/2nd respondent had lodged a complaint on 18.10.2012 and the relevant portion of the complaint, explaining the facts of the case are as follows:

I am a well-known singer in South India and the CEO of my entrepreneurial venture-Blue Elephant. In order to connect with my fans, I am active on social media platforms like Twitter and Face book. I have close to 1 lakh followers on Twitter. Since January 2011, I have been facing criminal intimidation on twitter. A few individuals have threatened to kill, rape and assault me. There are aspersions cast on my character as well as a chronic steam of extremely vulgar references and innuendoes even about my mother, patently false information that could pit groups against me, thereby endangering my life, has also been put out by trouble makers, Many of these, tweets are in Tamil. I am pasting an English translation of a sample of the offensive tweets. Screen shots of these pages on twitter are attached with this complaint.

The same people gang up, with new Ids and have also been saying I am against Tamil, Tamil Tweeters and Tamil Bloggers and that I have also have taken up cudgels against srilankan tamils.

In addition to this online stalking and harassment on twitter, some of the offenders also target me in their blogs such as "rajanleaks" and http://mantra3787.bldgspot.com/(the blog has been removed as of a week ago. Investigation will reveal that these cyber criminals have also been posting obscene comments about several WIPs in chennai.

May I please request you to have your cyber crime cell investigate this complaint, nab the culprits and prosecute them under the Indian Penal Code, Information Technology Act, the Tamilnadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act and other provisions of law.

4. The contention of the petitioner is that the petitioner who is an Associate Professor in the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Chennai was in a social networking and whenever tweeted in a social networking, if taken in positive pretext, the words in it are all positive and it is only the 2nd respondent's negative approach to the words attributing motive to the tweets of the petitioner. In this case, criminal intimidation would not arise since there was no physical presence and they have not met ever. Further on the averments in the complaint, Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Women Harassment Act would not get attributed. Further submitted that Section 66A, IT Act has been struck down by the Apex Court in the case of Shreya Singhal Vs. Union of India, wherein it is held that 'mere discussion or even advocacy of a particular cause, however unpopular is at the heart of Article 19(1)(a). It is only when such discussion or advocacy reaches the level of incitement that Article 29(2) kicks in'.

5. Further, the learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that though the incident is said to have been taken place on 04.01.2011, the 2nd respondent has made a complaint only on 18.10.2011 and the delay has not been explained. Subsequently, the petitioner was arrested on the false complaint of the 2nd respondent on 18.10.2012 and he was released on bail on 01.11.2012, which has caused innumerable sufferings and harassment. Further the 2nd respondent is a