The Delhi High Court has ordered Facebook, the company that owns the social media platform Instagram, to reveal the identity of the administrator of an account which carried sexual harassment allegations against artist Subodh Gupta a year ago during the #MeToo movement.
The court has also ordered Facebook and Google to take down web pages that show the content, which Gupta has alleged were defamatory in nature.
On September 18, in an ex-parte injunction – that is, an order passed without hearing the other side – Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said that prima facie, the allegations made in the alleged defamatory contents “cannot be permitted to be made in public domain” and “published without being backed by legal recourse”.
The judge said this after taking the view of Gupta’s lawyer on whether any legal action had been initiated against his client based on the allegations and whether the person who made the allegations had identified herself. The lawyer said no action has been taken.
The Instagram account Scene and Herd was also restrained from posting any content against Gupta in the interim.
News 18 reported that on Monday, the counsel appearing for Facebook assured the court that the alleged defamatory content would be taken down on Instagram and that the identity of the administrator of the account would be revealed in a sealed envelope, as ordered by the Delhi High Court on September 18.
In December, Gupta esigned as the curator of the Serendipity Arts Festival, 2018, after he was accused of sexual harassment by an anonymous person.
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