JUDGMENT :

S.K. PANIGRAHI, J.

1. The petitioner in this Criminal Misc. Case preferred under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 has challenged the Notice No. 1373 dated 12.05.2020 issued by the Opposite Party No. 2 in connection with Cyber Crime P.S. Case No. 0028 of 2017 corresponding to G.R. Case No. 1731/2017, wherein the petitioner was directed under Section 91 of the Cr.P.C. to appear in person along with three seized Laptops on 12.06.2020 and with a further direction to produce those seized laptops, as they were, without any tampering. Resultantly, it is prayed by petitioner that the said impugned notice under Annexure-3 dated 12.5.2020 may be quashed and set aside.

2. The factual matrix of the case in hand is that one Madhusudan Padhy, IAS, Transport Commissioner, Odisha lodged a written report on 11.09.2017 before the I.G. Crime Branch, C.I.D. with a request to investigate into a possible “hacking” of his e-mail I.D mspadhi@gmail.com by an unknown miscreant. Accordingly, on the basis of his report, Cyber Crime P.S. Case No. 28 dated 13.09.2017 was registered under Sections 465, 469 of the IPC read with Section 66 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 against an unknown person. Thereafter, a corresponding G.R. Case No. 1731 of 2017 was registered in the Court of learned SDJM, Sadar, Cuttack.

3. The prosecution case, in short, is that the informant received information from one Ashok Nanda on 2.8.2017 which narrates that he received three emails from an unknown person namely one Prasanta Rath having email ID prasanta.rath007@gmail.com. He further stated that the above e-mails purportedly related to the account of the informant wherein the said Prasanta Rath had sent a threatening email i.e. “you stop nuisance or we would go to Crime branch against you.” On getting such email, the informant enquired into the matter and found that some unknown miscreant had probably hacked into his email account and by creating forged electronic record and via a fictitious email ID i.e. prasanta.rath007@gmail.com for sending those incriminating e-mails. Accordingly, the informant requested for investigation into the matter by the police through its cyber cell.

4. After registration of the case, the Opposite Party No. 2 was entrusted with the investigation and immediately registered the case on 13.09.2017 and on the very next day correspondence was made with Google Inc. USA vide letter No. 3119/3120/3121/CID-CB seeking details and information regarding cobweb of those three e-mail IDs in question i.e. ashoknanda6@gmail.com.prasanta.rath007@gmail.com and mspadhi@gmail.com. Thereafter on 23.09.2017, the I.O. received a reply from the legal investigation support team of Google Inc. USA and commenced investigation of the case. It is pertinent to mention here that in the reply of Google Inc., it was ascertained that the accused has prepared a forged electronic document by using a pseudonym i.e. Prasanta Rath. By using the said pseudonym, the accused had sent the incriminating emails to Ashok Nanda (who is said to be a school senior of the informant) to threaten the informant. Taking into account, the entirety of the facts and circumstances, prima-facie, it was found that an offence under different provisions of the I.T. Act, 2002 was committed. The Investigating Officer started investigation into the case and she came to know that the petitioner herein Kamalakanta Tripathy was, in fact, using the said email ID by masking his true identity while sending the offending emails to the said Ashok Nanda.

5. Having figured out the identity of the accused who was hiding behind an alias, the Opposite Party No. 2 further dug into the issue in order to establish the culpability of the petitioner with the help of some trained agencies since the investigation of this nature involved a lot of technicalities. The investigation was initially initiated with an anonymous criminal with a masking identity but finally, prima-facie, discovered a ghost living