Cannot Stop Circulation Of Judicial Officer's Sexually Explicit Video Without Being Provided Users' Phone Numbers: WhatsApp To Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court on Friday was told by WhatsApp that it cannot stop the circulation of a video, showing a judicial officer in a compromising position, without being provided the phone numbers of the users.

"They are expecting us to do something that we are not in a position to do. MeitY also says we cannot do it till they give us phone numbers," submitted Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for WhatsApp.

The submission was made during the hearing of a suit seeking takedown of the videos circulating on social media platforms and messaging apps like WhatsApp. The court last month had directed the Centre and social media platforms to ensure that all appropriate steps are taken to prevent the sharing of the sexually explicit video on the internet.

Justice Yashwant Varma said the court also during the last hearing had observed that the platforms will not be able to act against private exchanges since they are not URLs. The counsel representing the plaintiff submitted that URLs have been shared with Google and MeitY.

Sibal submitted that Meta has removed the URLs. The counsel representing the plaintiff submitted that they will share the phone numbers with WhatsApp. Sibal submitted that the numbers have to be provided to the bench as the order has to come from court for blocking of the video.

The union government also submitted that it has filed a compliance affidavit. The counsel representing Twitter also said, "I have also complied...".

Justice Varma in the order said that the counsel for the plaintiff has apprised the court that respondents have taken remedial action. "He prays for and is granted liberty to provide further particulars of any phone numbers or URLs which continue to carry the content in question. Let the matter be called again for consideration on February 8," said the bench.

The court added that the details of the URLs on which the offending material is stated to be still to be available to be viewed have been handed to the counsel representing the defendants. The counsel representing Google, which owns video-sharing site Youtube, told the court that the URLs pertaining to it will be taken down.

The suit seeks a permanent injunction to restrain the social media platforms from publishing or telecasting the video in question. It is not known who filed the suit as the court has allowed a prayer to mask the identity of the plaintiff.

On November 30, the court had directed the defendants to take all permissible steps to ensure that "the further sharing, distribution, forwarding or posting of the offending video" is restrained forthwith. It had also asked the Centre to ensure that all further steps as warranted in terms of the communication of the Registrar General dated 29 November 2022 are taken.

The Registrar General had last month asked the authorities to take appropriate action for blocking of the said video over all ISPs, messaging platforms as also social media platforms.

While ordering takedown of the video, the court had said: "Bearing in mind the sexually explicit nature of the contents of that video and taking into consideration the imminent, grave and irreparable harm that is likely to be caused to the privacy rights of the plaintiff an ad interim ex parte injunction is clearly warranted.

The court had also observed that the provisions under Section 354C of IPC as well as section 67A of the Information and Technology Act "would appear to be violated" in case further circulation, sharing and distribution of the video were to be permitted.

Title: AX v. GOOGLE LLC & ORS.