A Division Bench of A.P. High Court comprising Chief Justice Anil Ramesh Dave and Justice Ramesh Ranganathan on Wednesday asked the Centre and the State governments to clarify their stand on a petition that charged them with inaction on a complaint filed against a US based website.
The website was constantly spreading hatred against India and its political personalities.
The Bench was dealing with a writ petition filed by Immaneni Rama Rao, advocate.
Notices issuedHe said after seeing this hate site he got issued notices to the Central IT Secretary, its computer emergency response team, State Home Secretary and ACP of cyber crime wing.
The petitioner said that he was a member of Scribd, a social publishing network.
The petitioner said he was pained at the kind of articles being published by certain individuals on the website. They wrote nasty things about Mahatma Gandhi, former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy and others.
He said the reply from Scribid was that public figures cannot be afforded protection against libel and slander and that the network was governed by laws of the United States of America.
The Bench gave two weeks to the respondents to file their replies in this regard.
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