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Baazee.com CEO case to come up today

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Our Economy Bureau New Delhi
Last Updated : Feb 06 2013 | 5:33 PM IST
The bail application of baazee.com CEO Avnish Bajaj will come up for hearing tomorrow at the Delhi High Court. Bajaj had pleaded innocence to the police.
 
Vacation judge Justice Vikramajit Sen asked the prosecution to file its reply to Bajaj's contention that no case was made out against him under the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code.
 
Senior advocates Arun Jaitley and AS Chandhik argued that no case could be held to be made out against Bajaj, an India-born US citizen, as bazee.com did not post the alleged obscene material on its website. He submitted that bajaj had been cooperating with the police in the investigation and even came here from Mumbai to assist the police.
 
On Saturday, a Delhi court had rejected Bajaj's bail plea and he was sent to judicial custody for six days. Industry chambers have come out in support of the baazee.com CEO with the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) calling his arrest in connection with the sale of a video clip as "extreme and unnecessary". The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry called for revisiting the IT Act to bring it on par with international norms.
 
Bajaj was arrested by the Delhi Police under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act for transmission of obscene material through the electronic media. Nasscom President Kiran Karnik called for the immediate release of Bajaj, even as the legal case proceeds.
 
"As a global, mature, and responsible technology industry and the most attractive destination for services, we need to ensure that we do not send out the wrong signals to global customers and investors," he said at a conference organised by The IndUS Entrepreneurs, TIE.
 
"The arrest is not a good sign. The state needs to correct itself. Nasscom will do everything it can for his release. We are not going into the merits of the case but he should not have been arrested in this way," Karnik said.
 
The portal was cooperating with the police for investigation and the arrest of the CEO, was a knee-jerk reaction by the government, said Saurabh Srivastava, Xansa India chairman. The police were able to track the original seller based on information shared by baazee.com following the arrest of Bajaj.
 
Srivastava said that it is important to consider precedents of cases like this in countries with a history of such incidents. Unlike other countries, where e-commerce sites are liable to remove objectionable material within 24 hours, India is yet to evolve to deal with cases such as baazee.com's, he added.
 
It is crucial that the liability of e-commerce sites on such issues should be defined to minimise impact on business, he said.
 
The parent company of baazee.com, e-bay, has already made it clear that the arrest was unwarranted. While it contended that the DPS clip violated the policies of baazee.com, it categorically stated that the clip was not on the site.

 

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First Published: Dec 21 2004 | 12:00 AM IST

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