Kerala HC Stays Summons Issued To WhatsApp India Executive

The Kerala High Court (HC) on Tuesday (February 20) reportedly stayed a lower court’s order directing WhatsApp India executive Krishna Mohan Choudhary to appear before it.

According to Moneycontrol, the single-judge bench stayed the order while hearing a writ petition filed by WhatsApp challenging the order passed by a Thiruvananthapuram chief judicial magistrate that summoned the representative of the messaging platform. 

The lower court issued the summons after the platform refused to furnish details of the person who uploaded obscene videos of a woman hailing from Kilimanoor town.

The HC observed that the punishment for the offence for which the WhatsApp representative was summoned was less than five years and stayed the summons.

Under the current Information Technology (IT) digital media ethics rules, major social media intermediaries are mandated to provide details of the content originator but only for offences punishable with imprisonment for more than five years. 

Meanwhile, the case will next be heard after both the Centre and the Kerala government file their respective responses before the HC. 

At the heart of the matter are the obscene videos that were shared on the messaging app. After a probe into the matter, the Kerala Cyber Police approached the trial court seeking details such as the mobile number and IP address of the WhatsApp account from which the video originated. 

However, the Meta-owned platform argued that furnishing such details was against its privacy policy. In response, the local police contended that the platform was mandated to reveal the details under the provisions of the digital media ethics rules.

As a result, the magistrate issued an order and summoned WhatsApp’s India representative before the court. 

The relief for WhatsApp comes just a day before the matter was supposed to come up before the trial court on February 21. The WhatsApp India representative had to be present in person during the said hearing.

It is pertinent to note that this is not the first time that the platform has landed in hot water over revealing the identity of its users over contentious issues. In 2023, the Tripura High Court stayed a similar order that directed WhatsApp to disclose the identity of the originator of a chat that contained a fabricated resignation letter attributed to Tripura chief minister Manik Saha.

The case also comes at a time when the government has cracked its whip on social media platforms for their failure to clampdown on deepfakes. In November last year, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) was said to be building a digital platform for users to report violations of the IT Rules by social media platforms. 

Not just this, MeitY was also said to be in the process of appointing a Rule Seven officer to oversee the establishment of a mechanism for enabling end users to file their complaints regarding deepfakes.