The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed the Indian National Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, and several individual defendants to remove allegedly defamatory content from social media platforms that sought to link Bharatiya Janata Party National General Secretary and former Rajya Sabha member Dushyant Kumar Gautam with the Ankita Bhandari murder case.
The single-judge Bench of Justice Mini Pushkarna further restrained the defendants from publishing, reposting, or otherwise disseminating any material—directly or by implication—that named, identified, or projected Gautam as the purported ‘VIP’ allegedly connected with the crime. The restraint was made applicable across all major digital platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The interim directions were issued on an application seeking interim relief in a civil defamation suit instituted by Gautam.
After a prima facie assessment of the pleadings and material placed on record, the High Court held that the balance of convenience lay in favour of the plaintiff. It observed that continued circulation of the impugned content would result in irreparable injury to Gautam’s reputation, an injury incapable of being adequately remedied by monetary compensation.
The High Court issued summons to the defendants, excluding intermediary platforms Meta Platforms Inc. and Google LLC at this stage, directing them to take down the specified posts and videos within 24 hours. It clarified that in the event of non-compliance by the primary defendants, the intermediary entities—X, Meta, and Google—would be required to remove the impugned content in accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
The plaintiff was granted liberty to notify the intermediaries of any other identical or substantially similar content, with corresponding disclosures to be placed on record before the Court. The single-judge Bench recorded in its order that if the intermediaries formed the view that newly reported content did not fall within the scope of the injunction, they could intimate the plaintiff, who would remain at liberty to seek appropriate directions from the Court.
Senior Advocate Gaurav Bhatia, appearing for Gautam, submitted that the impugned publications constituted defamation per se under civil law, containing reckless and unverified imputations without any factual substratum or reference to the investigative or judicial record.
Noting that Gautam’s name did not figure in the FIR, the charge sheet, or any judicial determination arising from the Ankita Bhandari case, the Senior Counsel contended that the allegations were engineered to malign the BJP leader’s reputation for political mileage.
He further argued that the coordinated dissemination of such content by national political parties, commanding millions of followers across digital platforms, substantially aggravated the reputational harm and fell foul of the standards of due diligence and responsible political communication. The suit sought permanent injunctive relief along with damages worth Rs two crore.
The Ankita Bhandari case relates to the murder of a 19-year-old woman employed at a resort in Uttarakhand, whose body was recovered from the Chilla canal in September 2022. In May 2025, a trial court convicted Pulkit Arya and two co-accused, sentencing them to life imprisonment.
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