Abstract

India is not only the most populated country right now after recently overtaking China, but it also finds the topmost position in the global stats for the highest percentage of cyberbullying cases in the world. Indian youths are highly exposed to social networking sites and often fall prey to unwanted harassment, making them prone to incidents of online bullying. Online harassment and cyberbullying is quite a neglected issue in India which is getting worse with every passing day, but still there are no special laws in India to tackle this menace. Incidents of online bullying in India are presently addressed by applying provisions of the IT Act 2000, which has not even felt the need to define ‘Cyberbullying’ as an offence and also by applying provisions of the IPC 1860 which are primarily meant for offline offences. Even the provisions of POCSO Act 2012 may apply in cases of cyber-sexual harassment of minors and also provisions of JJ Act 2016 may apply in case the perpetrator turns out to be a minor. Thus, in this present scenario, it becomes really important for us to find out by analyzing several Indian cases how the Indian Judiciary is responding to different types of cyberbullying incidents in order to tackle this ever-increasing menace in the absence of any specific legislation.

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