Allahabad High Court has stayed an FIR against two men accused of creating an email ID in another person's name and using it to send fake complaints to several people, including the Lokayukta, ruling that this act does not, on a preliminary reading, amount to identity theft.
A division bench of Justice Abdul Moin and Justice Pramod Kumar Srivastava held that Section 66-C of the Information Technology Act, which deals with identity theft, does not cover the creation of an email ID in someone else's name, since the provision specifically lists electronic signatures, passwords and unique identification features, not email IDs.
