It is stupid for Indian authorities to arrest EBAY CEO Avnish Bajaj. It’s like arresting a PM when there is crime in country.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20338
Ebay Indian executive bailed
But has to surrender passport
By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 21 December 2004, 16:20
THE CEO of Indian Ebay arm Bazee.com was granted bail by a court in Delhi today, but he’ll have to surrender his passport and stay in the country, the Indian press reports.
US citizen Anish Bajaj was arrested under the Information Technology Act of 2000, which makes it an offence to publish obscene material in electronic form.
Bazee.com had hosted sales of a home made video by a 17-year old Indian youth which allegedly contained pornographic material, but pulled the video as soon as it realised it was there.
Bajaj had travelled from Mumbai to Delhi voluntarily but was arrested by the cops last Friday and thrown into a no doubt extremely miserable Delhi jail, where he had to sleep on the floor with dozens of other suspects.
If convicted, Bajaj faces five years in jail or a fine of Rs 100,000 or both. The act itself is a wide-ranging piece of legislation which makes publishers responsible for content.
No one detects any irony in the fact that the Hindu civilisation was extremely tolerant of sexuality and gave birth not only to the beautiful statuary of Khajuraho but to a wealth of erotic literature in Sanskrit of which the Kama Sutra is only a a very pallid example.
These days the country is rather prudish in its attitude to the erotic - perhaps a legacy of the British raj, which went out of its way to ban practices such as temple prostitution, and in general regarded Hinduism as “idolatry”, which it certainly is not.