[citation needed] Punishments under the Act range from three years to life imprisonment (if the intent is to declare war against India - section 5).

A person prosecuted under this Act can be charged with the crime even if the action was unintentional and not intended to endanger the security of the state.

Under the Act, search warrants may be issued at any time if the magistrate determines that based on the evidence there is enough danger to the security of the state.

[5] A Delhi court in a 2009 judgement, in a case involving the publication of excerpts of a cabinet note in the Financial Express ten years earlier by Santanu Saikia, greatly reduced the powers of the act by ruling publication of a document merely labelled "secret" shall not render the journalist liable under the law.

Saikia was arrested in February 2015 in another case that the police said involved the writing of stories and analyses from documents allegedly stolen from the government.

[7] Attorney General KK Venugopal told the three-judge bench that the government could invoke the Official Secrets Act 1923, against The Hindu newspaper, which had published the papers.

He claimed that the documents pertaining to the purchase of Rafale jets published by the media are genuine[8] Justice Joseph one, of the three judges on the bench, asked the government about Right to Information Act 2005, Section 22 having an overriding effect on official secrets act and section 24 of RTI which mandates even security and intelligence organisations to disclose information on corruption and human rights violations.