Bajaj, who had been summoned from the US specifically for the case, argued that as a platform intermediary, he could not be held criminally liable for material uploaded by a user, and that the clip was taken down as soon as the management was notified. The legal debate was intense; while a lower court dismissed his bail plea initially, the legal proceedings eventually traveled all the way to the Supreme Court of India.
In a December 2004 report, police confirmed they had arrested an IIT Kharagpur student, , for allegedly circulating the MMS. Ravi Raj had reportedly obtained the clip via a Local Area Network (LAN) and had sold it to Baazee.com, raising approximately Rs 17,000 from the sales. dps rk puram mms scandal 2004 34 extra quality
As the Times of India noted in 2018, the scandal is now viewed primarily as a "devastating violation of consent." While the media of 2004 largely shamed the girl for her sexual agency, modern discourse rightly focuses on the fact that she was filmed without her knowledge and had her privacy stripped away forever. Bajaj, who had been summoned from the US
Following the scandal, schools and colleges across India implemented strict bans on the use of mobile phones within campuses. Ravi Raj had reportedly obtained the clip via
: Authorities charged Bajaj under Section 67 of the IT Act, 2000 (publishing obscene material) and the Indian Penal Code.
In late 2004, two 11th-grade students from the prestigious —an elite institution in New Delhi catering to the children of India's affluent class—became the focal point of national headlines. A male student, Hemant Chugh, used a rudimentary, video-enabled mobile phone to record a grainy 2-minute and 37-second clip of his underage classmate performing a sexual act.
The scandal exposed significant gaps in the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, leading to widespread calls for legal reform.