Instant messaging platform WhatsApp told the Delhi high court on Friday that it cannot remove the sexually explicit video of a judicial officer with a woman member of court staff until it is provided with the phone numbers that circulated the video.
The video allegedly shows a Central Bureau of Information (CBI) judge in the Rouse Avenue District Court Complex in an objectionable situation with the woman. The video was widely circulated on social media, prompting the woman to approach the high court on November 30. The judicial officer was suspended by the administrative wing of the Delhi high court.
In her plea, the woman had said that the video was false and fabricated. Besides seeking to restrain the circulation of the video, the woman has also sought to disable the users “from sharing or forwarding the video in question over their platforms”.
In a late night order that day, justice Yashwant Varma directed social media websites to block the circulation of the video.
On Friday, Twitter and Meta (formerly Facebook) said that they removed the video from the their websites. The counsel for Google, which owns YouTube, submitted before the court that the URLs on YouTube will be taken down. However, senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for WhatsApp said, “They are expecting us to do something that we cannot do. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) also says we cannot do it till they give us phone numbers that circulated the video.”
The counsel appearing for the woman told the court that he would supply some of the numbers and URLs.
The court noted that details of the URLs on which the video is still available has been handed over to the counsel representing the defendant platforms.
“The counsel for the plaintiff apprises the court that respondents have taken remedial action…he prays for and is granted liberty to provide URLs which carry the content in question to the concerned platforms for its removal”.
The high court also allowed the plaintiff to provide the phone numbers pursuant to which WhatsApp can take action. The matter is next listed on February 8, 2023.
On November 30,the court had said that the video is explicit in nature and imminent, grave and irreparable harm is likely to be caused to the privacy rights of the persons in the video.
“The defendants shall take all permissible steps to ensure that the further sharing, distribution, forwarding or posting of the offending video is restrained forthwith,” 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 judge said in the order.
