Delhi High Court: A petition was filed by Addictive Learning Technology Limited (plaintiff) popularly known as “Law Sikho” seeking permanent injunction along with damages, relating to tweets published by defendant 1, 2, 4 and 5 on the social media platform known as ‘X’ (formerly ‘Twitter’) being harmful and derogatory to the said plaintiffs and has defamed plaintiffs in Cyber Space. Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, J., imposed costs of Rs. 1,00,000/- payable to the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee within a period of four (4) weeks.
The plaintiffs have challenged two tweets published by defendant 1 and one (1) tweet published by defendant 4, which forms part of a ‘Conversation Thread No.1’ initiated by defendant 1 on his personal X handle. Similarly, the plaintiffs have challenged two tweets published by defendant 2 and one tweet published by defendant 5, which forms part of a ‘Conversation Thread No.2’ initiated by defendant 2 on his personal X handle. The dispute originated from a tweet posted by plaintiff 2 on 22-06-2024, on his personal handle, which discussed hiring trends in the legal industry and criticized the role of National Law Universities (NLUs) in campus placements. The tweet claimed that NLUs had become less relevant in legal recruitment, as law firms were now preferring experienced candidates from other institutions over fresh NLU graduates. This provocative statement triggered strong reactions, particularly from individuals affiliated with NLUs, leading to the emergence of two separate conversation threads initiated by defendant 1 and 2.
The plaintiffs identified six specific tweets as defamatory, three in Conversation Thread No. 1 initiated by defendant no. 1 and three in Conversation Thread No. 2 initiated by defendant no. 2. These tweets, according to the plaintiffs, contained false insinuations that their legal education platform deceives students and profits from their insecurities. The plaintiffs contended that such allegations, when made on a public platform, not only tarnish their reputation but also erode trust among potential clients and investors. Moreover, the plaintiffs claimed that some of the defendants, particularly defendant nos. 4 and 5, were anonymous users, making it difficult to address their grievances directly. They, therefore, sought court intervention to direct ‘X’ (defendant 3) to facilitate service of summons upon these users via the platform itself. The plaintiffs also sought an ad-interim injunction, requesting the court to restrain the defendants from posting further defamatory content pending the final adjudication of the case.
The Court relied upon an article ‘Online Trolling: A New Typology’ (Sage Publications, 2023), which recognizes the modus where a user intentionally publishes post/tweet on its social media handle to provoke emotional responses intended to increase user’s followers in social media presence. The Court noticed the decision in Nidhi Bhatnagar (Dr.) v. Citi Bank N.A, 2007 SCC OnLine Del 1661, wherein the said Court observed that it was not sufficient for a plaintiff to sue for words which merely injure his feeling or annoy him. As per the ratio of the said judgment, to maintain an action for defamation and to claim damages, the defendant’s utterance would have to be proven to be so offensive to lower the plaintiff’s dignity in the eyes of other right-thinking people of society.
The Court considered the availability of an alternative remedy to an aggrieved plaintiff/claimant in IT Rules, 2021. Pursuant to the IT Rules, 2021 being promulgated, every social media intermediary (like platform X in the present case) is expected to have a Grievance Redressal Mechanism. For aggrieved plaintiff/claimant to approach the Court without having triggered or exhausted the said time bound remedy is a material factor to be considered. The Court noted that utterances in tweets in a conversational thread on platform X are not to be assessed in isolation for the purposes of determining the defamation claim. The Court has to consider that nature of the medium is casual and fast paced, conversational in character and an elaborate analysis of a 140-character tweet (or even more than that) may be disproportional. Importantly, the absorption by the reader and the reaction to the post is impressionistic and fleeting.
The Court noted that it is not sufficient to only consider the impugned tweets/utterances but also to see the responses/reactions of the plaintiff to extract the context in which the conversation has happened on social media platform. A one-sided view by plucking out on isolated tweet/utterance cannot provide a sufficient cause of action to a plaintiff. The Court has noticed decisions of other common law jurisdiction drawing a distinction between a defamatory post and a post which merely had vulgar abuse. The Court has considered that the casual nature of the medium invites anonymous posts which may ex-facie be disparaging but cannot amount to defamation as it may not have a serious effect to form an impression about the character of the plaintiff.
The Court observed that a person cannot be penalized for holding an opinion and a cause of action for the aggrieved would only arise if such opinion is translated into action i.e. results in injury or harm or loss to the aggrieved. The Court further noted that mere allegation by the plaintiff that the statement of the defendant amounts to an innuendo is not sufficient and the plaintiff has to specifically plead in the plaint and prove the facts and circumstances which imbue the words with a special meaning. The Court also noted that a plaintiff alleging defamation on social media platform arising out of a conversation thread must mandatorily disclose the full conversation thread, particularly his own tweets/comments as well and should approach the Court with clean hands.
Thus, the Court rejected the plaint with costs of Rs. 1,00,000 payable to the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee within a period of four (4) weeks.
[Addictive Learning Technology Limited v Aditya Narayan Garg, CS(OS) 570/2024, decided on 20-02-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
Mr. Raghav Awasthi, Advocate for plaintiff
Mr. Himanshu Bhushan and Mr. Shagun Srivastava, Advs. for D-2
