Insufficient evidence linking the accused to the charges under the Information Technology Act and IPC led to discharge from all allegations.

ORDER

This criminal revision case has been preferred against the order dated 22.11.2024 passed in Crl.MP.No.17658 of 2024 in CC.No.9238 of 2018 on the file of IX Metropolitan Magistrate, Saidapet, Chennai, thereby dismissing the petition filed for seeking to discharge the petitioner.

A) CASE OF THE PROSECUTION:

2. The case of the prosecution is that a complaint was lodged by the one, Dr.R.Gunaseelan alleging that when he returned to Chennai st for presenting a scientific paper on 21 October 2013 in Barcelona in the International Conference of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, he had received an e-mail forwarded by his friend Dr.Kishore Vinayak to his personal e-mail address which had been sent originally by maxillofacial surgeon, Tertiary Government Hospital from e-mail address mpssurgeons@gmail.com. There were malicious, wrong and defamatory e-mails against him and he was not able to identify the sender of the e-mails. Therefore, he requested to identify the person and take necessary action as per law. On receipt of the said complaint, FIR was registered in crime No.30 of 2014 for the offence punishable under Section 66A of Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 and Sections 500 and 507 of IPC . After completion of investigation, the first respondent filed final report, in which the petitioner is arrayed as A1.

3. The petitioner is charged for the offence punishable under Section 66D of Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 alleging that he is working as a Software Engineer in Balaji Dental and Craniofacial Hospital, Chennai and due to the existing enmity between the Director of Balaji Dental and Craniofacial Hospital and the complainant and other maxillofacial surgeons, the petitioner created a fake e-mail address, mfssurgeons@gmail.com from his emachines laptop by using airtel data card on 23.10.2013 to influence the upcoming election of AMOSI of India, in order to deceive the dental doctors association members. He had sent the e-mail pretending to be a maxillofacial surgeon, tertiary government hospital to several individual doctors and association members so as to hide his real identity and impersonated for damaging the character and reputation. The petitioner has developed website and software for the hospital requirements and is maintaining the same. The complainant and other association members st were presenting a scientific paper on 21 October 2013 in Barcelona in the international conference of oral and maxillofacial surgery and after returning to Chennai, the complainant received e-mail forwarded by his friend to his e-mail address with defamatory and malicious statements. The said e-mail originally was received by ftasar@hacettepe.edu.tr from e-mail address mfssurgeons@gmail.com and BCC copy was received by the e-mail address erickahugu@uhmc.co.ke which belongs to Gunaseelan's friend Erikahugu on 23.10.2013 who in turn sent the same message from his another e-mail address i.e. erickahugu@yahoo.com to Kishore Nayak’s e-mail address on 24.10.2013. The forwarded e-mail contained the following information:

"Dear Indian ral maxillofacial surgeons, The meeting of IAOMS is currently happening at Barcelona. The current President Dr. Kishore Nayak and his extended family of Health and Medical Advancement Trust (HMA) is on a visit to this place. Dr. Kishore Nayak through his contacts at IAOMS has made Drs. Krishnamoorthy Bonanthaya, George Paul, Gunaseelan Rajan, Manjunath Rai, Sanjiv Nair and P. Anantanarayan as speakers for this meet, causing a huge loss to the ICOMS/IAOMS. This is currently the talk at Barcelona, where Indian's had become a laughing stock, thanks to Dr. Kishore Nayak. The HMA trust presided by Drs. Kishore Nay