Baazee CEO arrested for sex video

The U.S. State Department is watching the action on &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/fun/2002/11/12/39416.html ' target=_blank>eBay, but not as an interested bidder. Washington is concerned by the arrest Friday of Avnish Bajaj, the chief executive of Baazee.com, eBay's Indian shopping portal.

The Indian-born U.S. citizen has been held without bail over his site's listing of a &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/fun/2002/07/08/32009.html ' target=_blank>sex video purportedly shot at a prominent New Delhi high school. EBay said it was "outraged" by the arrest, which it said happened after Bajaj voluntarily traveled to New Delhi to cooperate with police.

"The video clip itself was not shown on the site; the seller offered to e-mail the clip to the buyer directly," the company said in a statement. "The listing violated Baazee.com's policies and user agreement and was removed from the site once it was discovered." The video's seller was arrested a week ago, but India's Information Technology Act is ambiguous about who should be held responsible for the electronic publishing of obscene material, reports Forbes.

The MMS video-clip that was traded is not only pornographic, it also violates the rights of one person who was filmed without her knowledge. The transaction was illegal, but the onus of the crime lies with the people who sold and bought it, not with the portal and certainly not its &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2003/12/05/51666.html ' target=_blank>CEO. It is pointless for the state to act against the Baazee CEO, since there's nothing he or his company has done that is unlawful. Auction sites function only because people trading on it take responsibility for their own actions and agree to play by the rules.

Self-regulation is at the heart of any successful trading system — from mediaeval bazaars to wholesale mandis and web-based auction sites. If participants break the rules, they jeopardise the entire system, wrote the Times of India.

The portal chief was arrested on Friday, with the police claiming that Baazee.com listed the clip on its site under the title ‘DPS Girl Having Fun’ for sale on November 24 and that he did not make any effort to remove it until prodded. A day later, the trial court remanded him to judicial custody.