Justice Neena Bansal Krishna, in her ruling, determined that the posts sensationalized the incident and contained false information.
NEW DELHI: On 14th June: The Delhi High Court issued an ex parte interim order requiring the removal of social media posts and videos by Congress party leaders Ragini Nayak, Jairam Ramesh, and Pawan Khera. These posts allege that journalist Rajat Sharma used abusive language towards Nayak during a live television broadcast.
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Justice Neena Bansal Krishna, in her ruling, determined that the posts sensationalized the incident and contained false information.
The court highlighted that allowing these posts to remain could cause irreparable harm to Sharma’s reputation. It emphasized the potential misuse of these videos in the future, which could perpetuate false perceptions about Sharma.
Therefore, the court mandated the removal of the specified posts and directed that any public domain videos be made private until further orders.
The Court emphasized the irreparable harm likely to be suffered by Sharma if the content remains on social media platforms.
“The X posts (Twitter posts) criticizing the plaintiff (Sharma) are sensationalized and present facts that are evidently untrue. The initial dissemination of these X posts not only damaged the plaintiff’s reputation, as claimed, but also poses a continual risk of future misuse against the plaintiff. The videos in question prima facie portray the plaintiff in a manner potentially divergent from reality, warranting their removal from the public domain until the final adjudication of the suit,” the Court ruled.
Justice Krishna affirmed that making these videos private or restraining Congress leaders from publicly sharing them does not violate their freedom of speech and expression.
“However, the ongoing presence of these videos and X posts/Tweets in the public domain could cause irreparable inconvenience, which cannot be adequately compensated by damages or other means in the future,” the Bench noted.
Accordingly, the Court ordered:
“Based on the above discussion, it is directed that the X posts and tweets (listed in ‘Annexure-1’), which have not yet been removed, must be taken down by the defendants within seven days as per the Intermediary Guidelines. Furthermore, defendant No. 2 is instructed to privatize the videos currently in the public domain and refrain from making them public again without further order from this Court.”
Sharma has filed a defamation suit against Nayak, Khera, and Ramesh, seeking Rs100 crore in damages. The controversy arose from a video clip circulating on social media alleging Sharma’s use of abusive language against Nayak during a televised discussion on India TV. Nayak subsequently filed a police complaint against Sharma, which further escalated the situation.
In response, Sharma denounced the allegations as false and accused the Congress party’s media cell of orchestrating a malicious campaign against him. He issued warnings through India TV against the dissemination of defamatory claims, asserting that the allegations lacked any factual basis and were damaging to his reputation.
