VERDICTUM.IN NEUTRAL CITATION NO. 2023/DHC/001676 was lascivious and appealing to the prurient interest and its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear. 21. The object behind enactment of Section 67 of the IT Act is punishing acts of publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form. Section 67A lays down that transmission of sexually explicit material circulated through cyber space is punishable. The judicial precedents dealing with 67 and 67A of IT Act and community standard test to determine obscenity in electronic media or otherwise, have been dealt with in following judgments. 22. The Hon'ble Apex Court in the case of Aveek Sarkar v. State of West Bengal AIR 2014 SC 1493 held as under: “…The correct test to determine the obscenity would be the community standard test i.e. Roth Test and not Hicklin Test and in order to check whether there is obscenity or not the material in question is to be taken as a whole. When the material taken as whole, it is found to be lascivious and tends to deprave a person who reads or sees or hears that material only can be said to be obscene. The Court observed that Hicklin test is in contravention to the Indian Penal Code. Further the Hon'ble Court observed that as the term 'obscene and obscenity' is not defined in Indian law. This makes the community standard test to be more suitable for Indian law regime. Also, the community standard test is more adaptive in need of changing the society…” 23. In G. Venkateswara Rao v. The State of A.P., Hon’ble High Court of Andhra Pradesh, Amravati in Writ Petition No. 1420 of 2020, has observed as under: “11…. The meaning of "Lascivious" is "feeling or revealing an overt sexual interest or desire". Similarly, prurient means CRL.M.C. 2214/2020 & connected matters Page 13 of 41