Social Media Platforms Can’t Be Silent Spectators & Wait For Court Directions; Intermediary Must Remove Information Used To Commit Unlawful Act: Delhi High Court
The Delhi High Court was considering a Contempt Petition filed under Article 215 of the Constitution, read with Sections 12 and 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna, Justice Madhu Jain, Delhi HC
While directing the removal of videos made by an alleged contemnor containing scandalous imputations against a sitting Judge of the High Court alleging corruption, the Delhi High Court has held that social media platforms cannot be a silent spectator and wait for directions from the Courts.
The High Court was considering a Contempt Petition filed under Article 215 of the Constitution, read with Sections 12 and 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, for initiating contempt proceedings against the respondents/contemnors for publishing and circulating the impugned scandalous and contumacious videos.
The Division Bench of Justice Neena Bansal Krishna and Justice Madhu Jain held, “While individuals who commit such contumacious and scandalous acts, are to be dealt with sternly as per law, but intermediaries can also not be a silent spectator and wait for the directions from the Courts.”
“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”, it added.
Senior Advocate N. Hariharan represented the Petitioner while Senior Advocate Vivek Reddy represented the Respondent.
Factual Background
The Respondent/first Contemnor had published and circulated videos/posts on social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and X/Twitter, making grave and scandalous imputations against a sitting Judge of the High Court. The publications alleged corruption, collusion, criminality, murder, quid pro quo and improper motives, in relation to judicial proceedings/orders passed by the High Court. The matter involved the death of people due to a building collapse.
It was claimed that these videos did not constitute fair criticism of a Judicial Ordee, they were ex facie scandalous and were calculated to lower the authority of the Court. Hence, the petitioner sought removal/deletion of the impugned videos, posts, captions, reposts, clips, derivatives and promotional material containing the contemptuous allegations against the sitting Judge of the Court and institution of the judiciary.
Reasoning
The Bench noted that the videos, which had been uploaded allegedly by Respondent, making allegations of corruption and collusion between sitting Judges of this Court and Government Agencies and labelling a person as a habitual offender and murderer, were nothing but absolutely scandalous, contumacious and were a direct interference in the justice delivery system.
Referring to Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Bench explained that as soon as it comes to the knowledge of an intermediary that there is information, which is being used to commit an unlawful act, it is under an obligation to immediately remove the information.
The Bench thus restrained the Respondents from uploading, publishing, hosting, communicating to the public, circulating, distributing, posting, tweeting, sharing, reproducing, transmitting, or otherwise disseminating or making available, whether directly or indirectly, the subject videos, or any identical similar version on any platform, website, social media account, channel, handle, application, WhatsApp or medium whatsoever.
“Respondent Nos. 2 to 5 shall take down, remove, disable access to, and block the URLs containing the Subject Video(s) forthwith, as well as the accounts/handles of the Respondent No.1 and in any case, within 24 hours of receipt of a copy of this Order”, the Bench directed.
Cause Title: Delhi High Court Bar Association v. Dr. Kapil Kakar (Case No.: CONT.CAS.(CRL.) 9/2026)
Appearance
Petitioner: Senior Advocates N. Hariharan, Rakesh Tiku, Sacchin Puri, Advocates Kunal Malhotra, Nitesh Mehra, Vidhi Gupta, Karan Shankar Mani, Vikash Kumar
Respondent: Senior Advocate Vivek Reddy, Advocates Varun Pathak, Amee Rana, Akhil Shandilya, Vishwajeet Deshmukh, Pival Peddireddi, Rohan Ahuja, Ankit Tripathi, Aishwarya Debadarshini, Abhishek K. Singh, Saksham Chaturvedi, ASG Chetan Sharma