A Delhi court Monday accepted Yahoo India’s application to remove its name from the list of websites dragged to court for allegedly posting defamatory articles. The complainant was fined Rs.5,000.
The court dismissed the plea of complainant Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, an Islamic researcher linked to a website run by the Islamic Peace Foundation of India, who had sought the removal of “objectionable content” from around 20 websites including Yahoo India.
Yahoo India had requested Administrative Civil Judge Parveen Singh to remove its name from the list of accused websites. It told the court that there was no defamatory material posted on its website.
The Delhi High Court March 2 quashed the criminal charge against Yahoo India of hosting objectionable content on its website.
The civil court March 1 accepted the plea of Microsoft India seeking the dropping of its name from the case.
Yahoo India said in its statement that there was neither any material on record nor any allegation in the complaint against it.
The company said it could not be made a party in the case as the complainant did not disclose any cause of action.
Yahoo India said in its statement to court: “The petitioner appears to have arraigned Yahoo India in the suit by bunching it with other prominent social networking websites on the patently mistaken assumption that Yahoo India was also a social networking website.”
Other companies named by Qasmi in his complaint will continue to face trial. Some of them, including Facebook and Google India, have already filed their statements in court.
