The Allahabad high court has directed the cyber cell of Lucknow Police to take immediate steps for the restoration of a woman’s mobile number that was blocked following a bogus complaint of her husband while observing that a citizen cannot be wronged in this manner by a callous handling of a complaint by the state agencies.
The court also directed the husband to show-cause why he should not be asked to pay damages to his wife for lodging a frivolous complaint.
Hearing the woman’s writ petition seeking restoration of her mobile number, a division bench of Justice JJ Munir and Justice Tarun Saxena said the police had blocked the number on the basis of a bogus complaint made by the husband due to a matrimonial discord between the couple.
Appearing on behalf of the petitioner, her counsel Prashant Pandey submitted that the petitioner’s phone number remained blocked for such a long period of time that it had been allotted to someone else.
During the course of hearing on May 15, the court said it was not satisfied with the reply filed by the police. “There is apparently a matrimonial dispute between the petitioner and her husband, who is fifth respondent in the case and whatever kind of a complaint was there, is attributable to her husband,” the court said.
“The stand taken in the personal affidavit of the In-charge, Cyber Cell, Police Commissionerate, Lucknow is very irresponsible. He has relied upon some order of the ministry of home affairs, government of India regarding blocking, debiting, freezing data received through the cyber portal. These are orders, which are not meant to be misused,” the court added.
“The In-charge, Cyber Cell, Commissioner, Lucknow will take immediate steps for restoration of the petitioner’s mobile number after getting in touch with the Telecom Service Provider/ Mobile Service Company concerned— and file his own affidavit after taking necessary steps within a week,” the court ordered.
Earlier, in March, the court had asked the official in charge of the cyber cell in the office of the commissioner of police, Lucknow, to explain why the number was blocked.
