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Delhi High Court temporarily barred APN Live news channel from broadcasting allegedly defamatory content against Patanjali Ayurved Limited of Baba Ramdev. The Single Bench of Justice V Kameswar Rao, while asking the defendants to take down the URLs issued by the appellant, observed that the plaintiffs had drawn up a prima-facie case and that even the balance of convenience is in their favor.
Senior Advocate Darpan Wadhwa, who appeared for the complainant, submitted that the complainant had been aware of the allegedly defamatory and abusive content of the defendants against the complainant on their news channels, including serious allegations that the complainant had sold Red-Sander Wood off against the interests of the country.
According to Mr Wadhwa, the order of the Additional Commissioner of Customs dated 16 September 2019 was not taken into account by any of the news / videos / posts pursuant to Section 128 of the Customs Act, 1962, in which the said Additional Commissioner dropped all proceedings against the complainants concerning Red Sanders seized on 17 February 2018 which were exported to China and allowed the release of the seized Red Sanders further granting permission to the plaintiff to export the same.
Mr Wadhwa further argued that the said news being still freely available in the public domain and is creating false aspersions against the reputation of the plaintiff. The plaintiff also submitted that, according to Rule 3(2)(b) of the Rules of Information Technology (Intermediaries) Guidelines, 2011, the defendant Nos. 2 to 4 as intermediaries is obliged to practice due diligence while discharging their duties, but they have allegedly failed to do so.
Mr Wadhwa also cited this court's judgment in Swami Ramdev & Anr. wherein it was held that this Court can grant injunction at the global level provided, the material has been uploaded from India. Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for WhatsApp, argued that there are no complaints of any identified / unlawful material shared on WhatsApp in the complaint.
While taking these submissions into account, the Court ordered Facebook and YouTube to take down the plaintiffs' submitted URLs, which they believed were spreading malicious and defamatory material against them.
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