LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Penal Laws 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions

The problem the Act solves is narrow and practical. Indian law was written for paper. A contract had to be signed, a document had to be filed, a record had to be retained, and every one of those words assumed something you could hold. The Act does not rewrite the law of contract or evidence. It supplies a rule of equivalence: what the older law demands on paper is satisfied electronically if the Act's conditions are met.

The salient features, chapter by chapter

Legal recognition of electronic records and signatures. Section 4 provides that where any law requires information to be in writing, that requirement is satisfied if the information is rendered in an electronic form and accessible for subsequent reference. Section 5 does the same for signatures. Section 7 covers retention of records and section 8 the publication of rules and notifications in an Electronic Gazette.

Electronic governance. Sections 6, 6A and 7A allow filing, issue and payment in electronic form and permit the Government to authorise service providers to deliver services. Section 9 is the safeguard: nothing in sections 6, 7 and 8 confers a right to insist that any Ministry or department accept a document in electronic form.

Offences. Chapter XI, sections 65 to 78, creates the criminal offences. Chapter XII, section 79, gives an intermediary a conditional exemption from liability, and section 81 gives the Act overriding effect. Section 75 extends the Act to offences committed outside India where a computer or computer system located in India is involved.

What the Act does not touch. The First Schedule, read with section 1(4), excludes negotiable instruments other than a cheque, powers of attorney, trusts, wills and contracts for the sale or conveyance of immovable property. A will cannot be made electronically in India, and that exclusion has survived every amendment.

Digital signature: what section 3 actually requires

Section 2(1)(p) defines a digital signature as authentication of an electronic record by a subscriber by means of an electronic method or procedure in accordance with section 3. The definition is therefore empty until you read section 3, which is where the technical requirement sits.

Section 15 adds a further tier. A secure electronic signature is one where the signature creation data was, at the time of affixing the signature, under the exclusive control of the signatory and no other person, and was stored and affixed in such exclusive manner as may be prescribed. The Explanation says that in the case of a digital signature the signature creation data means the private key of the subscriber. A secure signature is what the law of evidence attaches a presumption to: section 85B of the old Evidence Act, now section 86 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.

Section 3A and the shift to technology neutrality

The Act as passed in 2000 was tied to one technology. Only public key cryptography counted. The Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, which came into force on 27 October 2009, inserted section 3A and recognised an electronic signature, defined in section 2(1)(ta), as authentication by any technique specified in the Second Schedule. The Central Government may add to that Schedule by notification under section 3A(2), and has done so: the Second Schedule now carries e-authentication using Aadhaar or other e-KYC services, which is how the great majority of Indian documents are signed today.

Legal recognition, and what a court actually does with it

Section 5 is the operative recognition. Where any law requires information to be authenticated by affixing a signature, that requirement is satisfied if the information is authenticated by an electronic signature affixed in the prescribed manner. Section 10 empowers the Central Government to prescribe the type of signature, the manner of affixing it and the procedure for identifying the signatory.

Recognition also reached older statutes. Section 93 of the IT Act, read with its Third Schedule, substituted section 2(8) of the Bankers' Books Evidence Act, 1891 and inserted section 2A into it with effect from 17 October 2000, so that a printout of a bank entry became a certified copy if accompanied by the two certificates section 2A prescribes. Sections 91 to 94 of the IT Act and its Third and Fourth Schedules were themselves omitted as spent by the 2008 amendment with effect from 27 October 2009, but the amendments they made stand in the amended Acts.

Trimex International FZE Ltd. v. Vedanta Aluminium Ltd., (2010) 3 SCC 1, shows the commercial consequence. The parties negotiated a supply of bauxite entirely by email and no formal contract was ever executed. The Supreme Court held that a concluded contract had come into existence, because unconditional acceptance had been communicated, and that the absence of a signed paper document did not affect it. Legal recognition of the electronic record is what allowed the Court to treat the exchange as the contract.

The offences that protect the signature

The signature scheme would be worthless if the key and the certificate were not protected, and Chapter XI supplies that protection.

Section 65 punishes knowing or intentional concealment, destruction or alteration of computer source code required to be kept by law, with imprisonment up to three years or fine up to two lakh rupees or both. Section 66 punishes any act referred to in section 43 done dishonestly or fraudulently, with imprisonment up to three years or fine up to five lakh rupees or both. Reading section 66 with section 43 is the standard route to prosecuting unauthorised access to a signing key.

One provision that every textbook still describes as an offence is no longer one. Section 72, breach of confidentiality and privacy by a person who secured access under a power conferred by the Act, and section 72A, disclosure in breach of a lawful contract, were both decriminalised by the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023 with effect from 30 November 2023. Imprisonment was removed from each. Section 72 now attracts a penalty which may extend to five lakh rupees and section 72A a penalty which may extend to twenty five lakh rupees, and the marginal heading of section 72A was changed from Punishment to Penalty to make the shift explicit.

Two procedural sections complete the chapter. Section 77B makes every offence punishable with three years imprisonment bailable, and section 78 requires investigation by a police officer not below the rank of Inspector.

The third criticism is that the civil remedy has not kept pace. Section 43A, the only compensation provision for a data breach, is due to be omitted when section 44(2) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 commences on 13 May 2027, and it will be replaced by a penalty regime that pays the State rather than the individual whose data was lost.

Conclusion. The Information Technology Act, 2000 is an enabling statute before it is a penal one. Its central achievement is the rule of equivalence in sections 4 and 5, and the digital signature under section 3 is the device that makes that equivalence safe, because an asymmetric key pair and a hash function deliver authentication and integrity together in a way a scanned image of a signature never can. Section 3A then freed the scheme from a single technology, which is why an Aadhaar based e-sign is as good in law today as a cryptographic one. The offences in sections 65, 66, 66C, 66D, 71, 73 and 74 exist to protect that chain of trust rather than to police content, and where the Act has failed it has failed on the enforcement side, in an appellate tribunal allowed to lapse and a struck down section left on the statute book for eight years.