MADURAI: Sending smileys may not always amuse your boss as a group of BSNL employees has found. The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Thursday stayed an FIR registered against BSNL employees including officials for sending 'smileys' on WhatsApp to a woman divisional engineer of the BSNL.
According to a complaint filed by divisional engineer L Vijayalakshmi before the Tuticorin south police, there was an official WhatsApp group for BSNL in Tuticorin for communicating administrative matters. When she sent a video on the grievance of a customer and asked officials concerned to sort it out, she received 'smileys' as reply from many users in the group, the woman officer said. She further claimed that the users including a man named Linga Bhaskar sent smileys in order to harass her because of which she felt disturbed and humiliated.
Based on the complaint, the police registered FIR against 49 BSNL employees under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the Information Technology Act. Seeking to quash the FIR, the accused employees filed a petition before the Madras high court Madurai bench.
When the matter came up for hearing before Justice P N Prakash at the high court, the counsel for the accused said that the complaint did not attract any of the provisions of these three acts. It was a decided principle of law that a person had the right to express his or her feelings and views on social media which would never amount to any harassment, the advocate claimed.
The complainant had already ventilated her grievance before her department which conducted departmental proceedings by summoning all the people concerned. It was found that there was no prima facie case in the allegations. Hence, the police should not have registered the FIR, which thus needed to be quashed, the counsel said.
According to a complaint filed by divisional engineer L Vijayalakshmi before the Tuticorin south police, there was an official WhatsApp group for BSNL in Tuticorin for communicating administrative matters. When she sent a video on the grievance of a customer and asked officials concerned to sort it out, she received 'smileys' as reply from many users in the group, the woman officer said. She further claimed that the users including a man named Linga Bhaskar sent smileys in order to harass her because of which she felt disturbed and humiliated.
Based on the complaint, the police registered FIR against 49 BSNL employees under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and the Information Technology Act. Seeking to quash the FIR, the accused employees filed a petition before the Madras high court Madurai bench.
When the matter came up for hearing before Justice P N Prakash at the high court, the counsel for the accused said that the complaint did not attract any of the provisions of these three acts. It was a decided principle of law that a person had the right to express his or her feelings and views on social media which would never amount to any harassment, the advocate claimed.
The complainant had already ventilated her grievance before her department which conducted departmental proceedings by summoning all the people concerned. It was found that there was no prima facie case in the allegations. Hence, the police should not have registered the FIR, which thus needed to be quashed, the counsel said.
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