Andhra Pradesh High Court (HC) Chief Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra told Twitter Inc. to pack up its business if it has the intention to violate the laws made by Indian Parliament.
He also warned the social media giant against disregarding the orders passed by the High Court, during a hearing of the cases related to abuse of Judges through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc., along with Justice M. Satyanarayana Murthy on Monday.
Justice Mishra said the Social Media Intermediaries (SMI) appeared to be playing hide and seek with the court and that he would be forced to direct the police to initiate criminal proceedings as a punishment for contempt.
While advising Twitter to mend its ways, the Chief Justice ordered that it should give a detailed explanation in the form of an affidavit by next Monday, to which day the cases were posted for further hearing.
Appearing for the CBI, Additional Solicitor-General of India S.V. Raju informed the court that there were devious ways in which the mischief-mongers could access the URLs by submitting fake identities and continue targeting the judiciary.He insisted that the SMI should tell how they planned to deal with such technicalities hampering the investigation.
While promising that YouTube would strictly comply with the court orders and it has already pulled down most of the subject URLs, senior advocate Sajan Poovaiah said the presence of TV news channels on YouTube was causing it tremendous problems as the objectionable content telecast by them was being viewed by millions. Therefore, notices should be issued to the news channels also to curb the menace entirely, he suggested.
Advocate N. Ashwani Kumar pointed out that Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) were providing surreptitious means to post malicious content on social media.
Contempt plea closed
In a related case, the High Court closed a contempt petition filed against Gopala Krishna Kalanidhi, an advocate practising in the High Courts of A.P. and Telangana, for making disparaging remarks on some Judges in the Supreme Court belonging to Andhra Pradesh, upon the tendering of an unconditional apology and giving an undertaking that he would not do such things in the future.
