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Why do we need your help?

Section 66A of the Information Technology Act,2000 was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015. However, as evidence by the Zombie Tracker, the provision continues to be used to censor free speech.

The first phase of this tracker has helped us to collect empirical evidence of the continued use of Section 66A across 11 states. To know more about how we collected this information, including the data souce, geographic spead, timeframe etc., please visit our Methodology section.

To effectively track the use of Section 66A across the country, we need to monitor case data from the 11 states we have already covered as well as expand the data set all across the country. This is not a static operation and will need resources to be kept updated.

We aim that our platform will, firstly, highlight the number of cases with a pending under S.66A as well as the number of cases registered after the decision of the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal. Secondly, we intend to present our findings to the judiciary and law enforcement bodies to ensure S.66A is not invoked again and any pending charges are dismissed.Lastly, we hope to provide a privacy-preserving open data set to aid researchers in further research and analysis.

To carry this work forward and also to further develop and maintain this platform, we need your help. Your donations will help us in continuously upgrading our tracker as well as ensuring S.66A is not invoked again and any pending charges are dismissed.

We estimate that the cost of maintaining and expanding the tracker to cover the remaining states would be Rs. 15,00,000/- over the course of 2021.

This estimate account the costs for

• Monitoring the status of pending cases and have updated data for the 11 states till the end of 2021.
• Adding more states on the platform.
• Finding alternate sources of secondary data to work around the standardization and missing data challenges on e-Courts.
• Ensuring data anonymisation and maintaining open data repositories for researchers, so that the data can be used for wider reporting and analysis.
• Outreach efforts to do more evidence based data reporting on this issue.
• Personnel/staff costs that will work with discipline and strategy to protect and advance your digital rights. This includes costs for a developer, to conduct the data mining and maintenance of the tracker, and a legal researcher.