The Delhi High Court has directed Surinder Kumar Choudhary — the Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir — to include as defendants in his defamation suit the individuals who originally uploaded the videos and content he claims to be defamatory. The suit was filed seeking removal of certain online videos and posts alleging misconduct by Choudhary. The Court advanced the hearing date and asked the plaintiff to effect service of notices on the uploaders once they are impleaded.
The Court also ordered major social-media intermediaries, including Meta Platforms and Google LLC, to supply subscriber information and IP-address data for the Facebook pages and YouTube channels responsible for uploading the contested content — to allow Choudhary to identify the actual persons behind those accounts. The Court permitted Choudhary to take these steps within a short timeframe and indicated that after impleading these parties, it would consider whether to grant takedown or injunction relief.
In the underlying petition, Choudhary alleged that certain videos and recordings circulating on social media depicted him in a compromising phone call with a woman and contained material of a sexual or defamatory nature. However, during the first hearing, the Court observed that the petition lacked transcripts or copies of the impugned content, making it impossible to assess whether the material was defamatory or not. The Court therefore directed Choudhary to file the alleged content — for instance on a pen drive — so that it can be examined in court.
With these orders, the Court has ensured that the defamation suit proceeds by holding not just the platforms but also the actual uploaders legally responsible, and by making clear that content removal or injunctions will depend on a judicial evaluation of the material’s actual nature.
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