The Delhi High Court, by its order dated October 23, 2019 in the matter Swami Ramdev v. Facebook Inc.[1], has ruled that Indian Courts are permitted to issue global injunctions (i.e. global takedown orders) in relation to defamatory content being uploaded from India on platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. (‘Platforms’). The plaintiffs filed the suit contending that the defendant Platforms were allegedly responsible for displaying defamatory content in relation to the plaintiff (i.e. Swami Ramdev). The defamatory content consisted of videos and comments based on a (now banned) book titled ‘Godman to Tycoon – The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev’.

The Delhi High Court held: (i) Under Section 75 of the Information Technology Act (‘IT Act’), the Courts were permitted to exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction and therefore, empowered to issue a global injunction against the Platforms; (ii) Geo-blocking would only amount to partial removal of data, and a global injunction would be more appropriate; (iii) The term ‘computer resource’ is defined ‘as a computer, computer system or a computer network’ and not merely restricted to a single computer; rather it encompasses within itself a computer network and such computer network could be a global computer network. Accordingly, as long as the uploading of the information / content took place from India, or the information / data was located on a computer resource in India, the courts would have the jurisdiction to pass global injunctions; (iv) The Platforms were not exempt as intermediaries under Section 79 of the IT Act as they did not exercise adequate due–diligence, as defamation was not included as a ground as part of their policies, which was required under Rule 3 of the Intermediaries Guidelines; and (v) The Platforms were directed to take down content which was uploaded from IP addresses within India, and as far as the URLs were uploaded from outside India, they were directed to block access and disable them from being viewed in the Indian domain.

Facebook has appealed against this order of the Delhi High Court[2] to a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, which has been admitted. However, no stay has been granted on the order passed by the Delhi High Court.

[1]Swami Ramdev v. Facebook Inc., 263 (2019) DLT 689. [2] FAO (OS) 212/2019 and CM APPL. 47224/2019.