The Supreme Court docket has upheld the compensation awarded to a Dalit couple by a Bombay Excessive Court docket order that widened the ambit of “property” underneath the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act to incorporate digital mental property.
The couple, each of whom have PhDs from Jawaharlal Nehru College (JNU), had gone to the Bombay Excessive Court docket in search of compensation over the theft of their analysis information from their Nagpur house.
The Maharashtra authorities, which had opposed their plea within the Excessive Court docket, later moved the Supreme Court docket towards the November 10, 2023 HC order.
However a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and S C Sharma dismissed the state’s plea on January 26. “We’ve heard the realized counsel for the petitioner at size. We don’t discover any advantage within the Particular Go away Petition”, the court docket mentioned.
The couple, Shiv Shankar Das and Kshipra Kamlesh Uke, had instructed the Bombay HC that that they had collected greater than 500 samples for his or her socio-political survey from college students of varied academic centres in Nagpur. They alleged that whereas they had been out of town, the son of their home proprietor, who belongs to the next caste, broke the locks of their premises together with police and took away uncooked analysis information, survey kinds and course of information by stealing their laptops.
The couple lodged a grievance, and an investigation was launched. The Nationwide Fee for Scheduled Castes, too, carried out an inquiry.
Throughout this time, the couple sought numerous types of aid, together with for mental property injury, underneath Part 15A(11)(d) of the SC/ST Act. This provision fees the state with the obligation to supply aid in respect of loss of life or damage or “injury to property”.
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The fee really helpful that the District Justice of the Peace think about the couple’s ten-point demand, pay them compensation and kind an SIT to research the matter.
The SIT was fashioned and a cost sheet was filed towards the accused. However the couple alleged that despite the fact that they had been granted aid underneath sure heads, the authorities took the stand that there was no provision within the Act or the Guidelines to grant any further aid within the type of compensation for the injury to mental property.
Following this, they approached the Bombay HC, arguing that the phrase “property” referred to within the provision encompasses property corresponding to information, digital materials and mental rights.
The state authorities contended that the phrases “injury to property” within the provision are required to be interpreted to imply tangible and bodily property.
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Rejecting this argument, the Excessive Court docket Division bench had mentioned that the phrase “property” will not be outlined in any provision of the Atrocities Act and, “due to this fact, have to be given a plain and literal that means to the phrase, which would come with immovable and movable property, whether or not tangible or intangible or in any type of in any respect nature which is able to being valued”.
“The that means to be assigned to the phrase ‘property’ would come with incorporeal property such without any consideration in rem, a proper over materials or immaterial factor and features a authorized proper in a property not having any bodily existence corresponding to a Patent, a Copyright or a Design that are intangible in nature and lack bodily existence. Mental rights are rights in property despite the fact that they lack bodily existence and are, due to this fact, able to valuation for the aim of deciding compensation or aid underneath the provisions of the Atrocities Act,” it mentioned.
“We maintain that the mental property contained within the type of information or digital materials or every other materials contained within the delicate copy or digital kind… could be able to valuation for the aim of granting reliefs by way of the provisions of Part 15A learn with Rule 12 of the Atrocities Act and Guidelines made thereunder,” it mentioned.
