Delhi High Court Orders Removal Of Social Media Posts Calling Sitting Judge 'Murderer' Over Saket Building Collapse Deaths

The Delhi High Court on Monday ordered removal and take down of social media videos and posts containing “contemptuous” allegations against a sitting High Court judge by a man who blamed the judge over a recent incident wherein a building collapsed in Saket area claiming 6 lives.

A division bench comprising Justice Neena Bansal Krishna and Justice Madhu Jain directed social media platforms Meta, Google LLC, X Corp and LinkedIn to remove the scandalous posts against the judge forthwith and also indicated that a detailed order will be passed for blocking of the handle.

The development ensued in the criminal contempt petition filed by Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) against one “Dr. Kapil Kakar”, who also uploads a series of videos on a page namely “Black Justice”.

Senior Advocate N Hariharan appeared for the lawyers' body and took the court through the content of the videos posted by Kakar.

He said that in the videos and posts, Kakar has made scandalous, false and contemptuous allegations targeting the sitting judge. Hariharan said that Kakar has alleged that the single judge is the “real criminal” behind the unfortunate deaths and that the judge was a “murderer.”

Kakar also posted a video questioned that if the judge will be sent to jail or be hanged to death for the deaths in building collapse.

Observing that the content must be taken down forthwith, the Court remarked:

“How do we stop this? What is happening is that the media has become all powerful…. There should be some responsibility (on intermediaries). Once you get to know about something so absurd, why don't you remove all of them? I am asking them that once it comes to your notice, why is there any embargo that intermediary is not imposed with responsibility?…. This is not one case, this is happening daily. What is the responsibility? Not everyone can come to court. They have to work on something… these are coming routinely which is not the answer.… please remove everything forthwith.”

ASG Chetan Sharma submitted that it should be the intermediary's duty to take down such content if something shocking comes to its notice.

“It is not that it is at arms length distance, we won't do anything. If anything is apparent, then you have to act. They should down it down forthwith,” he said.

On this, the Court said: “The public memory is very short lived. This is not genuine, it is just to scandalise. We can only hope that public does not pay attention to all this.”

The counsels appearing for Meta, Google and LinkedIn said that the links will be taken down, including any further links which will be brought to their notice. X Corp was not represented by any counsel today despite advance notice.

“Remove all the links,” the Court said while also indicating that an order to block Kakar's handles will also be passed.

Title: Delhi High Court Bar Association v. Dr. Kapil