Sunday Strike

• Boy who shot the video clip arrested • Police examining provisions of IPC as well as infotech act to book him • Industry voices concern over the arrest of Baazee CEO • Ficci wants rethink on infotech act provisions

New Delhi, Dec. 19: The boy at the centre of the sex-clip scandal was arrested this evening.

The Class XI student of Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, engaged in a sexual act with a girl of the same school and filmed it on his camera phone, sending the clip later to friends as a multimedia message.

A Delhi police official said: ?The boy was held this evening and further investigations are being done.?

Prabhakar, the deputy commissioner of police, economic offences wing, added that as the boy is not an adult, special arrangements will be made for him to spend the night in custody. On Monday, he will be presented before the juvenile board.

This is the third person to be arrested in the case after Avnish Bajaj, the CEO of online auction site baazee.com, and IIT Kharagpur student Raviraj Singh, who sold the video clip to eight customers, using the portal.

All three have been arrested under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, which prohibits the sale of obscene material through the electronic medium.

Sources said the boy was arrested from the airport. There have been reports that the girl has been sent to Canada by her family.

Both the boy and the girl were expelled from DPS, R.K. Puram, after the scandal broke. But the boy, the son of an exporter, found admission in the prestigious British School here.

Following Bajaj?s arrest on Friday, Delhi police had obtained a non-bailable arrest warrant against the boy. Several attempts to serve the warrant at his residence had failed because there was no one at home.

The school management told Delhi police that he was not attending classes. When the police visited the boy?s house yesterday, they were told that the family was out of the city.

The commerce student, a part of the Delhi Under-17 cricket squad, had an entire floor to himself at his upscale New Friends Colony residence, a swank car, credit cards and a cellphone.

Baazee chief Bajaj?s arrest has caused surprise and anguish in industry. Ficci secretary-general Amit Mitra said IT law clauses relating to transmission of obscene material through electronic media should be changed.

?The IT act needs to be rethought. This has many ramifications. To arrest the CEO who was cooperating in the investigations without a proper notice or chargesheet is highly irregular. This is not how things would be done in the US,? he said.

The information technology industry said such actions could send wrong signals to investors.

Kiran Karnik, the chairman of industry body Nasscom, said: ?baazee.com is a site available worldwide and people interact from so many countries. We don?t know how the law departments of other countries will react.?

He made the same point as Mitra. ?It is not a good practice where the person who is willing to cooperate is put behind bars. I have just arrived from a trip, but what I could gather is that the baazee.com CEO flew down from the US to help Delhi police.?