New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday heard a public interest litigation seeking directions to the police to issue mandatory guidelines to invoke relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act whenever a complaint is made for lodging an FIR for alleged cyber crime. A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad asked the Delhi government counsel to file a response on the plea by PhD scholar Ananya Kumar.

The petitioner, in the plea, said she was agitating the “cause of the people who are suffering due to non-implementation of the various provisions of Information Technology Act, 2000 in its true sense”.

The petition said that due to non-implementation of Information Technology Act (IT Act), public money spent in establishing and running the special cyber police station was getting wasted and aggrieved person was also not able to avail the civil remedy under the law.

“Most of the time whenever the aggrieved complainant approaches the police in Delhi for legal action in cyber crime, the police in a routine manner registers an FIR only under the provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) in contravention of the law laid down by the hon’ble Supreme Court of India,” the plea said.

The petitioner also prayed for directions to the Centre and state government to provide “separate infrastructure” and “online visibility” for proper functioning of the adjudicating officer appointed under the IT Act and spread mass awareness to make the public aware of such appointment.

The matter would be heard next in May.