Transmission or publication of obscene material

Section 67 of the said Act punishes publication or transmission of obscene content in electronic form. On first conviction, imprisonment of a term upto three years and fine is prescribed which may extend upto Rs.5.00 Lacs.

Transmitting or publishing sexually explicit acts in electronic form

Section 67A provides punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene digital content containing sexual explicit acts. This could be any adult content videos or MMS or short clips or images including 'selfies' (self clicked images) . As per 67A of I.T. Act punishment on first conviction is imprisonment of a term which may extend to five years and fine which may extend upto Rs.10.00 Lacs.

Child pornography and child grooming

Section 67B punishes child pornography, child grooming or exploitation.This Section was added by IT (Amendment) Act, 2008. According to this Section, if any person publishes or transmits material depicting children in sexually explicit acts in electronic form or creates images text, collects, seeks, downloads, advertises, promotes or distributes content that depicts children in obscene or in sexually explicit manner, such person is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend upto five years and imposed fine which may extend upto Rs.10.00 Lacs. The said Section also provides that if any person entices children into online relationship with one or more children for sexually explicit acts or in a manner that can offend a reasonable adult, or facilitates abusing children online or records in electronic form own abuse or that of others relating to sexual explicit act with children is punishable on first conviction with imprisonment for a term which may extend upto five years and fine upto Rs.10.00 Lacs.

Violation of privacy

Section 66E of I.T. Act provides punishment for violation of privacy. Whoever intentionally or knowingly captures or publishes or transmits the images of a private area of any person without his or her consent in which violates the privacy of that person is punishable with imprisonment which may extend upto three years with fine not exceeding Rs.2.00 Lacs or both.

Computer related offences

According to Section 66 of I.T. Act, if any person dishonestly or fraudulently does any act mentioned in section 43, such person is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend upto three years or with fine which may extend upto Rs.5.00 Lacs or both. Section 43 covers those cases where-

(i) a person unauthorisedly secures access to a computer (hacking)
(ii) downloads or copies any data or database (data theft),
(iii) introduces any virus into a computer, damages or causes to be damaged any computer, data, data base or program
(iv) disrupt, causes denial of access attacks (DOS attacks)
(v) provide any assistance to a person to facility access to a computer in contravention of the provision of this Act
(vi) charges services availed by a person to the account of another person by tampering or manipulating of any computer,
(vii) destroys, deletes or alters any information residing in a computer resources or diminishes its value or utility or affects it injuriously by any means,
(viii) steals, conceals, destroys or alters or causes any person to do so, any computer source used for a computer resource with an intention to cause damage.

Identity theft

Section 66C deals with punishment for identity theft. Any person who fraudulently or dishonestly makes use of electronic signature, password or other unique identification feature of any person is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend upto three years and fine which may extend upto Rs.1.00 Lac.

Cheating by personation

If a person garbs fake identity of another person and cheats another person, he is said to commit cheating by personation. This could be committed through blogs, fake profiles, or use of misleading webpages or email addresses, fake images, etc

Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 ( POCSO):-

In addition,the POCSO Act was enacted in year 2012 to provide legal protection against sexual assault, sexual harassment and child pornography. Section 12 provides that the offence of sexual harassment shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and also imposition of fine. Section 14 provides that the punishment for child pornography shall be imprisonment which can extend to five years and liable to fine and in case of second and subsequent conviction with an imprisonment of a term which may extend to seven years and also be liable to fine. Section 15 provides that if any person stores for commercial purpose any pornographic material in any form involving a child, it is punishable with imprisonment of a term which may extend to three years or fine or both.