Delhi High Court Restrains Circulation Of Posts With Political, Communal Undertones Targeting Lawyers

The Delhi High Court has passed a john doe order restraining the circulation of allegedly defamatory and communally provocative social media posts against two advocates, observing that such material affects their dignity and personal lives.

Justice Subramonium Prasad was hearing a suit filed by the lawyers seeking permanent and mandatory injunction, damages, and directions to X Corp. (formerly Twitter) to take down the impugned content.

The plaintiffs, a married couple and legal professionals, alleged a coordinated campaign by anonymous social media accounts and unknown persons publishing false, malicious and communally inflammatory content targeting them.

The suit named two anonymous X accounts as well as john doe (unknown entities) as defendants.

Granting interim injunction in favour of the lawyers, the Court observed that the tweets were communally provocative, profane and vulgar in nature which affects their dignity and personal lives.

“The content of the tweets are extremely derogatory and no human being with dignity and self- respect can live peacefully and with head held high if such scandalous, vulgar posts are circulated against them amongst the public at large,” the Court said.

It added that a substantial amount of content in the tweets included statements that can be construed as communally inflammatory.

The Court observed that references were made to the personal lives of the lawyers in the context of their political inclinations, which indicated a “brewing campaign” by those “who have opposing political inclinations.”

Observing that some posts contained threats of physical and sexual violence, the Court said:

“All of these posts have been gathering widespread attention from the general public, which is also attributable to the language used in the impugned content, which in the prima facie opinion of this Court, have been written in a way to garner more and more attention.”

The Court held that continuous circulation of the impugned content is likely to cause harm to the reputation and career of the Plaintiffs and if not taken down immediately, such loss to reputation would not be capable of being compensated monetarily.

“Accordingly, the Defendants, their agents, associates or any person acting on their behalf are restrained from publishing, reposting, circulating or in any manner disseminating any defamatory, false, misleading, communally provocative or derogatory content concerning the Plaintiffs,” the Court directed.

“Further, the Defendants No. 2 to 4 are directed to remove/delete/take down the impugned posts, tweets and related content concerning the Plaintiff from the platform X (formerly Twitter) and any other platform where the same has been published or shared before, within three (3) days from the date of upload of this Order,” it added.

Justice Prasad also directed X Corp to take down, disable access to and prevent further dissemination of the impugned content and any identical or similar content relating to the lawyers.

Reiterating that reputation forms an integral part of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the Court emphasized the need to balance freedom of speech with the right to reputation.

Counsel for Plaintiffs: Mr. Rajiv Nayar, Senior Advocate, Mrs. Rebecca John, Senior Advocate, Mr. Prashanto Chandra Sen, Senior Advocates; along with Mr. Gaurav Gupta, Mr. Sarim Naved, Mr. Abhik Chimni, Mr. Kapil Madan, Mr. Omar Hoda, Mr. Jaspal Singh, Ms. Namrah Nasir, Ms. Eesha Bakshi, Mr. Uday Bhatia, Mr. Kamran Khan, Mr. Surya Kiran Singh, Ms. Ayesha Khan, Mr. Aviral Jain, Ms. Manjira Dasgupta, Mr. Prabhav Bahuguna, Mr. Naman Maheswari, Mr. Utkarsh Trivedi, Mr. Rupal Gupta, Ms. Shambhavi Khare and Mr. Nilanjan, Advocates

Title: X & Anr v. X CORP AND ORS