NEW DELHI: Instant messaging App WhatsApp on Friday submitted before the Delhi High Court that it cannot stop the circulation of a viral video, showing a city court judicial officer in a compromising position with a woman, without being provided with the phone numbers of the users in compliance with the court order.
Appearing for WhatsApp, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal said the company is not in a position to do.
“They are expecting us to do something which we cannot do. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) also says we cannot do it till they give us phone numbers,” he said during the hearing.
The woman’s counsel said the phone number can be shared by her.
However, Sibal said that the numbers have to be provided to the court as the order to remove the video has to come from the court. Other social media platforms Meta and Twitter submitted that they had removed the video circulating on their platforms. The MeitY submitted that it had filed a compliance report in this regard.
“The counsel for the plaintiff apprises the court that respondents have taken remedial action… he prayed for and is granted liberty to provide URLs which carry the content in question to the concerned platforms for its removal,” the court said.
A suit was moved in the high court seeking a permanent injunction to restrain the social media platforms from publishing or telecasting the circulating video. Earlier in the month, the court had ordered social media platforms to take all permissible steps to ensure the further sharing, distribution, forwarding, or posting of the offending video, circulating on its app unless phone numbers are provided to them.