Legal Reference Library

Supreme Court of India has observed that freedom of expression includes right to be informed and right to know and feeling of protection of expansive connectivity. A three Judge Bench of Dipak Misra, AM Khanwilkar and Mohan Shantanagoudar made the above observation in Sabu Mathew George Vs Union of India which is filed for the proper implementation of Pre-Natal Diagnostics Technique (PNDT) Act and ban the online sex determination advertisements flooded the internet which is  violative of Pre-Natal Diagnostics Technique (PNDT) Act. The Court had already given many directions to the search engines like google and yahoo to take effective steps to stop the online ads.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said some people appeared to have misunderstood its judgment upholding the criminal defamation provision in the IPC and thought that their right to free speech had been curtailed. During the hearing on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's petition seeking quashing of a criminal defamation case against him, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said, "Any criticism of someone does not make the speech a ground for launching criminal defamation proceedings under Sections 499 and 500 of Indian Penal Code." The judge appeared anguished by the misinformed criticism of the May 13 order. Justice Misra, who had authored the judgment, said, "What we said in our judgment, people must read and understand. It does not cripple or curtail right to free speech. What is curbed is defamatory speech. Every day a writer, politician, critic or an antagonist would make some statement or the other criticising someone or the government. That does...

In a significant judgment, a bench comprising of G.S. Patel, J dismissed an application for injunction in a defamation action brought by the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) for an article published in a financial news website. The article in question was based on a letter written by an anonymous whistleblower which alleged that that insiders at the stock exchange had given unfair advantage to certain high-frequency traders. The Court noted that the journalist who wrote the article, had made repeated attempts to contact the NSE chairman and other NSE members before publishing the article but she had received no response. Instead the journalist and editor of the website were slapped with a 100 crore defamation suit and an injunction seeking removal of the articles. Dismissing the injunction plea , the Court observed that defamation law is not to be used to gag, to silence, to suppress and to subjugate. The Court went on to say that  “the freedom of speech and expression is a...