Delhi High Court: A Single Judge Bench comprising of J.R. Midha, J., in an order directed Facebook Inc., Google LLC, YouTube LLC to remove the content as mentioned by the plaintiffs (Patanjali Ayurved Ltd.) to defame them from their respective portals.
The plaintiffs stated that videos containing slanderous, defamatory and absolutely false statements about the plaintiffs were uploaded and shared on the portals of Defendants 2 to 4 and in order to get rid of that the plaintiffs had sent a notice for the removal of such videos to the Defendants. The Defendants denied doing so as they sought for a Court order from the plaintiffs for the said act.
Further, plaintiffs submitted that the whole mechanism of approaching the Court in itself is an unreasonable and unfair procedure as it puts the citizens to a heavy cost of litigation.
Therefore, on approaching the High Court, the list of URLs published and shared on the portals of the defendants pertaining to the videos which contained slanderous and defamatory content were asked to be removed or blocked/restricted to access. Also, Defendant 1 was restrained from giving any interview in print, electronic, social media till the next date of hearing. Further, the Court asked the defendants to comply with the provisions of Order XXXIX Rule 3 of CPC. [Patanjali Ayurved Ltd. v. Meera Singh,2018 SCC OnLine Del 10543, Order dated 10-08-2018]
