Photo: meta.m.wikimedia.org
The Supreme Court put aside an order passed by the Delhi High Court on Thursday (April 17, 2025) instructing the revocation of the Wikipedia page in accordance with a libel case filed by the news agency Asia News International (ANI) against the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation in the United States.
Justices of Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan observed that the bench and divisional seats of the single judges passed the High Court orders of April 2 and April 8 respectively, based on ANI’s prayers that were too broad to be enforced.
New Application
Justice Oka suggested at the hearing that the lawyers appeared to be ANI to return to the High Court and had new applications pointing out specific content on the page, deeming it “false, misleading and defamatory.”
“Back to the single judge [of the High Court] To point out a specific prayer for a specific section to be removed from their website…what to be removed when you say “delete all false content”…who decides what slander is,” Judge Oka asked the attorney.
The News Agency’s lawyer said his client did not object to the shelving of the top court orders of the High Court, while granting the free new requirement to grant a temporary injunction, limited to specific content or republishing the same content.
“this [page] It is dynamic in nature. Every time I [ANI] Attacking certain statements on the page may appear in a slightly different language new statement or republish… They will change a word or two and then come back to the same content. ” he proposed.
Therefore, the bench canceled the order of the High Court and allowed the news agency to file a new application before a single judge to “give appropriate temporary injunctions in order to be included in the specific content above [Wikimedia] or repost specific content”.
The bench requires a single judge (if such an application is made) to rule on its own merits by a Supreme Court order on April 17. The Supreme Court shall decide by a single judge in all disputes raised by the parties.
The news agency filed a defamation lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation in July 2024 in the Delhi High Court.
publishing – April 17, 2025 at 09:27 pm IST
