NEW DELHI: The Union of India informed the Delhi High Court on Friday that as many as 21 websites, which also include search engines and networking sites such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Orkut, YouTube, and blogger, would be prosecuted for offences for promoting enmity between classes.
The government counsel told the court that sufficient material is available to proceed against the 21 websites, which also includes Yahoo, for offences of promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration.
The sanctioning authority has personally gone through the entire records and the material produced before it, and after examining the same, it is satisfied that there is sufficient material to proceed against the accused persons under Sections 153-A, 153-B and 295-A of the Indian Penal Code.
A two-page report in this regard was presented after the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to get the summons served on more than 10 overseas-based firms.
On December 23 the summons were issued to these 21 websites for allegedly committing offences of criminal conspiracy, sale of obscene books and sale of obscene objects to young persons.
It had said prima facie the accused companies were liable to be summoned, but the summons could not be executed without having prior sanction of Central or State government or the district magistrate.
The Department of Information Technology, in its report, had granted sanction to proceed against the 21 companies.