Yahoo India, facing trial for hosting allegedly objectionable material on its website, has told a Delhi court that the suit against it was “motivated” and should be dismissed. Facebook India filed its reply in the case Tuesday.
“The suit is a complete abuse of the process of law,” Yahoo India said in its reply to the court’s direction to 21 social networking and other sites to remove objectionable content from their web pages.
Yahoo India requested the court to strike its name out from the present suit.
The suit should be dismissed, Yahoo India said, requesting the court to impose exemplary cost on the petitioner.
The court was hearing a petition of Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, an Islamic researcher linked to a website run by Islamic Peace Foundation of India, who sought the removal of “objectionable content” from websites.
Administrative Civil Judge Praveen Singh, on the last hearing Feb 6, directed the websites to file a written statement within 15 days and warned them against displaying these objectionable contents on their sites.
Tuesday was the deadline for filing the statements. Yahoo India filed its statement Feb 17 while Facebook filed its statement Tuesday.
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 complainant did not disclose any cause of action against it.
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, said Yahoo India.
The company denied that any of the inflammatory contents put on record was shown on its websites.
“The present proceedings are somewhat akin to a public interest litigation (PIL), wherein the plaintiff has sought certain reliefs, which do not directly concern the plaintiff and without there being any actual existing interest in the subject matter,” Yahoo India said.
Yahoo India denied the submission of Qasmi that he filed the present suit as a responsible citizen.
Appearing for Qasim, advocate Santosh Pandey alleged that around 20 websites were showing defamatory articles. He requested the court to take action against them and direct them to remove the objectionable contents.
Google submitted a compliance report in court in the last hearing, saying that it had removed certain defamatory pages from its sites.
