Social media platforms need not wait for court orders to act against content maligning judges: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court recently observed that social media intermediaries cannot be silent spectators when content hosted on their platforms interferes with the judiciary’s independence or maligns institutions and individuals. .A Division Bench of Justices Neena Bansal Krishna and Madhu Jain referred to Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and underscored that as soon as the intermediaries get to know about information being used to commit an unlawful act, they are under an obligation to remove it. “Therefore, as soon as it comes to the knowledge of intermediary that there is an information, which is being used to commit an unlawful act, it is under an obligation to immediately remove the information, data or communication link residing in or connected to resource controlled by the intermediary and expeditiously remove or disable access to that material on that resource without evidence in any manner,” the Court said. It added that while individuals who commit such scandalous acts are to be dealt with sternly as per law, social media platforms "can also not be a silent spectator and wait for the directions from the courts".“Any endeavour to use them [social media tools], to cause harm to the society or to interfere the independence of Judiciary and to malign the institutions and individuals, cannot be accepted in this country, where Rule of Law and principles enshrined in the Constitution of India, prevail,” the Bench said. .The High Court made these observations while ordering YouTube, X, LinkedIn and Meta to block the accounts of one Dr Kapil Kakkar and remove his posts in which he termed a sitting High Court judge a “murderer” for the death of six people in a building collapse in Saket last month. Kakkar had accused the judge of corruption, collusion and criminality. The order was passed on a criminal contempt of court petition filed by the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA). The Bench observed that fair criticism of judicial orders and institutions is permissible, but allegations attributing corruption, collusion, criminality or improper motives to judges without any lawful basis cannot be equated with legitimate criticism. It concluded that the videos uploaded by Kakkar were “absolutely scandalous, contumacious" and amounted to direct interference in the functioning of justice delivery system..Senior Advocates N Hariharan, Rakesh Tiku and Sacchin Puri along with advocates Kunal Malhotra, Nitesh Mehra, Vidhi Gupta, Karan Shankar Mani and Vikash Kumar appeared for the DHCBA. Senior Advocate Vivek Reddy with advocates Varun Pathak, Amee Rana, Akhil Shandilya, Vishwajeet Deshmukh and Pival Peddireddi represented Meta. Advocates Rohan Ahuja, Ankit Tripathi and Aishwarya Debadarshini represented Google. Advocates Abhishek K Singh and Saksham Chaturvedi appeared for LinkedIn. .[Read Judgement]