Wife’s pic being shown as of Hathras victim, man tells Delhi HC

The Delhi High Court has directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to act expeditiously on the complaint of a man who claims that the photos of his deceased wife is being wrongly circulated on social media, depicting her as the victim of Hathras alleged gang-rape case.

"The respondent no. 1 (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) is directed to look into the complaint of the petitioner and, if the complaint of the petitioner is found to be correct, act on the same expeditiously, in any case, within a period of three days from the receipt of copy of this order, by issuing necessary directions to the respondent nos. 2 to 4 (Facebook, Twitter and Google) in this regard," said a single judge bench of Justice Navin Chawla in its order.

Petitioner Ajay Kumar has stated that the photograph of his deceased wife is being circulated on various social media platforms, wrongly depicting her as the victim of the unfortunate incident of gang rape and murder of a young girl at Hathras in Uttar Pradesh.

During the hearing, Kumar's counsel told the court that even otherwise, revelation of the identity of the rape victim is an offence under the Indian Penal Code, though in the present matter, the image of a wrong person is in circulation.

Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, appearing for social media giant Twitter, agreed that the petitioner can make a complaint to the National Crime Records Bureau and once the information regarding the offending URL is forwarded to Twitter through the proper channel referring to this court order, the same would be blocked/removed from the platform.

Advocates Neel Mason, Ridhima Pabbi and Ekta Sharma, appearing for Google, too made similar submissions, assuring action once the information regarding the URL of the offending content is forwarded to it through proper channel.

The court has now posted the matter for further hearing on November 9.