New Delhi
A Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice J Chelameswar sought explanation from Maharashtra for the Palghar facebook arrest incident, but also took note of the three other incidents of harassment this year "the arrest of Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, businessman Ravi Srinivasan in Puducherry and Air India employee R Jagannatha Mayank Sharma in Mumbai.

The bench also allowed the intervention of India Against Corruption activist Aseem Trivedi, who was arrested and slapped with sedition charges for drawing cartoons lampooning Parliament and Constitution to depict its ineffectiveness. The Bombay high court had later dropped sedition charges against him and he now faces a case under Section 66A of IT Act.

The apex court issued notice to the Centre, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Puducherry and Delhi and asked them to respond in four weeks to petitioner Shreya Singhal's plea to strike down Section 66A as unconstitutional, as coercive steps taken under this provision had a chilling effect on crores of users of social networking sites, thus violating their fundamental right to free speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution.