Administrative Civil Judge (ACJ) Mukesh Kumar of the Rohini District Court in Delhi has issued directions to several companies including Google, Yahoo and Facebook asking them to take down “inflammatory” images of religious figures which have been displayed on their websites.

The suit has been filed by Ajias Arshad Qasmi, founder of FatwaOnline.org and former spokesperson of Darul Ul Uloom at Deoband against Facebook, Google etc.

The Suit No. 505/11 titled Mufti Ajias Arshad Qasmi v Facebook etc has impleaded 22 parties including the Indian and global heads of Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Youtube., The Plaintiff has also impleaded the blogging site Blogspot and popular discussion forums Exbii and MyLot.

In the plaint (a copy of which is with Bar & Bench), Qasmi alleges that some of the contents on these social networking sites are “intolerable to any community or religion” residing in the country. Qasmi also states that this objectionable and provocative material may lead to harmful consequences and even goes on to link the increasing crime rates in “metropolitan cities” with the increased use of social networking sites.

On December 20, 2011, the learned ACJ disposed of the application for ex-parte ad-interim injuction by directing the Defendants to remove the “defamatory articles” from their social networking sites and further restraining the Defendants from publishing the articles. The Judge while giving reasons for this order said that if the Defendants were not directed to do so, then “every individual who is having religious sentiments” would suffer irreparable loss and injury. Furthermore, the ACJ observed that there is “every apprehension” of mischief whenever these social networking sites are being used by the public.

Taking all these factors into consideration the ACJ had issued summons to the Defendants and listed the matter for December 24, 2011. Advocate Santosh Pandey, counsel for the plaintiff, informed Bar & Bench that on December 24, 2011 counsels for two of the Defendants (Microsoft and Yahoo) appeared and were directed to file their compliance of the earlier order by February 6, 2012.

Luthra & Luthra is representing Yahoo India in this matter with a team led by Advocates Sanjay Kumar and Varun Pareek.

The matter is now posted for February 24, 2012.

It will be interesting to observe the future course of action taken by the Defendants given the Indian government's plan to force websites to pre-screen content before putting it up online. This move had drawn vociferous criticism from various quarters including the US government, forcing the government to eventually abandon the scheme.

It is fairly likely that the government shall be keeping a close watch on the developments of this case, as will be the growing number of internet users in the country.