New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Tuesday dismissed a suit filed by Tamil Nadu politician Sasikala Pushpa, stating her image was tarnished due to morphed photos and videos with a man that were uploaded on social media.
While dismissing the suit, Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw observed that being a politician, Sasikala’s right to privacy had to be balanced with the “right of the public to know the identity of the person whom the plaintiff meets and hobnobs with, behind closed doors”.
“Considering the fact that the plaintiff is a politician, participating in the electoral process and is a representative of the people, the people and/or the electorate certainly have a right to know that the plaintiff behind closed doors meets and hobnobs with a man to whom she is not married and particularly a man who belongs to a political party, which is a rival of political party to which the plaintiff belongs,” the court said.
It further observed the public has an interest in knowing such things and said: “If such meetings with member of a rival political party, which the plaintiff wants to remain hidden from the public, are not of interest to the public for the purposes of maintaining purity of administration and law making, little else would qualify as of public interest.”
Dismissing her suit, the court directed Sasikala to pay Rs 2 lakh to Facebook separately, and Rs 2 lakh in total to Google and YouTube.
Also read: SC issues notice to Gautam Navlakha on NIA plea challenging Delhi HC order on jurisdiction
Suit filed in 2016
Sasikala filed the suit against Facebook, Google, YouTube and the central government in September 2016, asking for removal of the photos and videos, as well as for an injunction against any such photos being published.
When the suit was filed, she was an expelled Rajya Sabha MP of AIADMK. She joined the BJP in February this year.
She claimed in her petition that uploading of the photographs and videos “constitutes a grave and irreversible violation of rights of the plaintiff to reputation and violates all legally, judicially established norms of privacy and has caused irreparable damage to” her.
‘Vague, half-hearted’ submissions
The court noted Sasikala had not sought removal of the photographs for being “obscene”, but because they showed her with a politician from the DMK, the arch rival of the party she belongs to.
It then asserted that as a politician, this cannot be termed defamatory, observing: “Once the plaintiff has described herself as a politician and an elected representative of the people i.e. a public persona, mere presence of a man, even if other than the husband of the plaintiff, alongside the plaintiff in photographs, can by no standard of a reasonable person be said to be defamatory of the plaintiff, as the plaintiff in the course of her political journey is bound to come in contact not only with women but also men.”
The court also opined that Sasikala’s argument that the photos were morphed were “vague” and “half-hearted”, and pointed out neither the alleged forger of the photos nor the man in the morphed photos had been added as a party to the suit.
Referring to provisions of the Information Technology Act, the court then asserted platforms such as Facebook etc. cannot be asked to remove content “merely because any information on the internet is offensive or causes annoyance, inconvenience, danger etc. to a person”.
Such a person, it said, should instead approach the designated governmental agency or the court, which would issue such an order, asking the platform to take down the content for reasons other than it just being “an irritant”.
Also read: Dignity eludes the dead in Delhi as bodies come for cremation stacked up inside hearse vans