NEW DELHI: It was not the Delhi Police but an “imposter” who urged X, to take down the social media accounts of Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) and Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), India, on its platform, the Delhi High Court was told on Friday.
The submission was made before Justice Amit Mahajan, who was hearing petitions filed by the two organisations on the issue.
According to the petitions, on October 31 and November 2, the Special Commissioner (Crime) of Delhi Police purportedly sent “illegal content reports” to X over certain posts allegedly defaming the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Following the notices, both the organisations approached the high court, which issued notices to X, as well as the Delhi Police.
During the hearing on Friday, the counsel for X informed the judge that a case has been lodged against the imposter.
“We did not act on it. We have done an internal investigation and it turns out this was an imposter. Notices are not sent by the Delhi Police. We filed a complaint with Delhi Police last night to find the imposter,” the counsel for X submitted.
The senior counsel representing the petitioners said that certain notices were purportedly issued by the Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) to X, calling upon the platform to remove/ withhold certain posts from their accounts within three hours and also block their entire accounts.
“The authenticity of the notices was, however, doubtful,” the senior counsel added.
The court closed the proceedings on the petitions in view of X's stand.
The petitions before the high court said that "reports" were legally unsustainable as they did not disclose due authorisation and were not in accordance with the mandate of law under the Information Technology Act.
It claimed that one of the notices had alleged that the organisations published defamatory content against the RSS. It invoked Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which deals with criminal defamation.
The second notice covered 40 URLs, including 37 individual posts and the entire X accounts of the three entities; IFF, SLFC and Geo Blocked in India). It also sought the removal of posts by 16 other users who had commented on the controversy.