The Delhi High Court has appointed Senior Advocate Saurabh Kirpal as Amicus Curiae in the case of an aggrieved woman who has filed a writ petition seeking a direction to pornographic sites to remove any nude or sexually explicit or morphed photos of her from their sites, a direction to the Lajpat Nagar police to file an FIR on her complaint and to YouTube to block channels in her name.
The single-judge bench of Justice Subramonium Prasad directed the counsel for the petitioner to implead the remaining entities containing objectionable photos and videos of the woman. Previously, the court had directed Google, YouTube, Cyber Cell of Delhi Police and the Central Government to take necessary steps to remove the sites and links, carrying objectionable photos and videos of the woman.
Advocate Mamta Jha, appearing on behalf of Google LLC, stated that all the offending materials, which were notified and available on YouTube against the petitioner, have been removed and no fresh content has been uploaded. She further stated that 49 URLs, which were notified, have been de-indexed and clarified Google LLC is a search engine, the fact that the links, which were de-indexed by the Google LLC, do not mean that they cannot be found on the internet.
Advocate Richa Kapoor, appearing for the Delhi government, submitted that there are only five links that are active.
In her plea to the High Court, the petitioner had sought:
- i. Direction to block the sites, which under pseudo names are operating as pornographic sites.
- ii. Direction to delink/de-tag/de-reference/deindex the name of petitioner from respective search engines, providing access to adult or pornographic sites.
- iii. Direction to block any nude or sexually explicit or morphed photos of petitioner appearing on their sites respectively.
- iv. Direction to register an FIR on the complaint of the petitioner made to Lajpat Nagar Police Station, New Delhi, and to conduct an expeditious investigation in the matter.
- v. Direction to YouTube, to block channels in the name of the petitioner. Direction to seize CCTV footage of Union bank of India, Lajpat Nagar Brach, New Delhi as the same would corroborate the extortion.
Advocate Sanjeev Mahajan sought for the court’s leave to implead the said five entities namely : i. Notice be sent to Registrar PDR Ltd. d/b/a, Domain Name: PublicDomainRegistry.com, Email ID: contact@privacyprotect.org.ii. Notice be sent to Registrar, Domain Name: Name.com, inc, Email ID: abuse@name.com.iii. and v. Notice be sent to NameCheap, Inc., Email ID: abuse@namecheap.com.iv. Notice be sent to GoDaddy.com, LLC, Email ID: abuse@godaddy.com.
Advocate Debopriyo Moulik appearing for the respondent No.10 (accused) submitted, his client has not uploaded any objectionable and offending contents on the website. The petition has been listed for further hearing on November 8.