India endeavors to police its Internet

The Internet empowers; it is an amazing information source, a forum for freedom of expression and an easy means of commerce and communication. But it can boomerang on users as well, as India's mostly young online users are learning, sometimes the hard way.

There are an estimated 50 million active Internet users in India, with the numbers slated to double in a year.

This month, Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid, an information technology (IT) consultant in his early 20s, was arrested by the police for posting "offensive" comments on Google's popular social networking site, Orkut.

Vaid, based in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, had aired his views in a forum "I hate Sonia Gandhi". Sonia Gandhi is a national political leader and president of the Congress party that leads the federal government. The police traced Vaid after collecting his personal information from Google.

Vaid could end up in jail for five years under India's tough IT-Act 2000 as he has been charged under Section 67, which relates to publication of obscene information in electronic content.