Assignment 1 IPR Name Mohit Sharda Roll Number 192018 Prof :- Neetu Jain

Location City

: :

AIPL Office. Mumbai

Background A lady employee (the complainant) lodged a complaint that she was being harassed by a flood of telephone calls from unknown men with sexual intention at all odd hours and from various places around the world. As she was a working lady, most of the calls were received by her aged in-laws. When she had her telephone number changed, and requested the new number to be kept private, her neighbors started receiving the same kind of calls asking for her by name. This was thoroughly harassing her aged in-laws, her husband and also her neighbours. Some men also visited her house, seeking her by name. The issue was reported by the Complainant to her husband and a report was filed at the nearest Police Station regarding the same. The police registered a case under the IPC and issue a search warrant for un-identified people. Investigation A caller ID was installed at the house of the complainant and a few of the local callers were interrogated. During interrogation it was found that the callers had obtained her e-mail ID in one of the chat rooms. All those who sent the mail to her got an auto response giving her residence telephone number and urging them to call during office hours on working days as her husband is away during those hours. On receiving such e-mails these people contacted her on the phone numbers given in the e-mail. Police requested for IP addresses of the e-mail IDs from the Website hosting company. In addition they asked for IP logs and registration profiles of the respective e-mail ID's. The logs revealed the service provider (ISP), who subsequently provided the telephone number and the address of the user. The ISP provided the details of the IP and addresses/ information connected to it. The data received was found to have some relation with the Organization and also to some cyber cafe IP . Raids were conducted at the house address and also a communication regarding the same was send to company CIO, at the same time the issue was reported by the lady to the company also. The company formed a panel for 4 people comprising of the CIO, Legal consultant, IT In charge and the communication manager, the company took the relevant data from the Police and started a in house investigation on the same, during the search it was found that the IP address were used in the same department in which the lady was working, soon the IT department planned to find the culprit and started scanning all computers and vigilance on all data exchanged was kept. During the same it was found that the complainant was employed as a Junior executive engineer in the same company with the accused. The accused felt that though she was junior to him, she was not giving him proper respect. Her performance was receiving lot of appreciation and he was feeling sidelined and hence he started sending auto generated e-mails in her name, giving her telephone numbers and asking males to contact her during office hours.

Action :The company registered a case under the Internal Compliance and Sexual Harassment policy and following actions were taken :a. b. c. d. The person was sacked from the Job and a Black Notice was issued against him baring him to get a job in the other companies. All his funds were like PF, Gratuity etc was sealed. The Person was asked to give a amount of 10 Lac to the victim for the suffering she faced. A legal Counselor was given to the lady to fight her case in the court of law.

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The case with all evidence etc was then submitted to the Police.

Current status It is registered as the case under the Cyber Law and Sexual Harassment . The court imposed a fine of 10 Lac additional as the defamation charge and also issued a notice against the all who made calls to the victim house and imposed the fines. The Gentleman was also sentence to 2 month Jail and an medical checkup was ordered for the mental state.

Analysis:The case is a very unique case of using the medium for harassment as IT and also not seeking any personal benefits and was more due to insecurity etc. The case also was very serious because it was reported by the Police to the organization and a handful of evidence were already available and if a proper investigation by organization would have not carried out, could have resulted in actions against the organization. In my view the company did a good job and investigation the issue in detail and making sure the policy are strictly followed, also they kept the interest of the victim and also by helping her to fight the case in the court of law they shared the responsibility of making sure that the guilty is punished and justice is given to the victim.