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He Submits that the entire process followed in the seizure panchanama, which was conducted at the residence of the Appellant at Pune, and the process of attachment of the hard-disk and other printed material is flawed and is not in accordance with the procedures provided under Section 16 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 ("IT Act"), as one could not consider that the electronic record comprising the letters to be a secure electronic record, within the meaning of J-APEAL-294-2022.odt Section 14 of the IT Act; he further contends that the entire procedure followed for attachment of the hard-disk during the seizure was contrary to the Security Procedure Rules under the IT Act. He takes us through the report of the Forensic Science Laboratory dated 14.11.2018 and contends that the hash value of the hard-disk was taken for the first time at the Directorate of Forensic Science Laboratories at Kalina, Santacruz (East) Mumbai, and prior to that there was no hash value recorded by the cyber crime experts, who accompanied the raiding team, that conducted the seizure of the hard-disk.

19. It is further the contention of the learned Counsel for the Appellant that the procedure contemplated under the Information Technology Rules, 2021 ("IT Rules") requires a hash value to be taken of the content of the hard-disk by the cyber crime expert before cloning or creating a mirror image of the data contained therein, applying the digital signature of the cyber crime expert to the hard-disk, which procedure has not been demonstrated on the examination report dated 14.11.2018, nor is there any statement in the seizure J-APEAL-294-2022.odt panchanama recording the hash value of the data on the hard-disk, at the time of its seizure. He therefore contends that there being neither a certificate under Section 65B of the Evidence Act, 1872, to support the report nor any material to show the procedure followed, whilst seizing the hard-disk, the entire material cannot be considered a secure electronic record of the data in the said hard-disk, and would have to be discarded being inadmissible. He submits that except for this record, which is suspect, there is no material in the charge- sheet to implicate the Appellant.

At the outset, we must point out that a plain reading of the panchanama conducted at the house of the Appellant records the entire hard-disk from the computer of the accused was seized. The documents produced before us do not establish the accusation that the Investigating Authorities started the computer of the accused at his residence, transferred the data from the hard-disk and then shut it down during the operation of seizure. The hard-disk appears to have been sealed and sent to the forensic laboratory for analysis. The report of the forensic laboratory J-APEAL-294-2022.odt prima facie shows that the cyber crimes technicians accessed the hard-disk for the first time at the laboratory by means of his own digital signature, specifying the hash value of the information contained in the hard-disk at the time it was first accessed at the lab, creating a clone or mirror image of the data in the hard-disk, and then re-applying the digital signature of the technician at the time of shutting down the hard-disk. A reading of the report would prima facie shows that what was then used for analysis was the clone or mirror image copy of the data on the original hard-disk.