Google CEO Sundar Pichai Receives Contempt Notice from Mumbai Court

Nitin Konde, Varun Bhardwaj

Dec 4, 2024 — 2 min read

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Served with Contempt Notice by Mumbai Court

Google CEO Sundar Pichai was served with a contempt notice by a Mumbai court on 2 December. The said notice has been served regarding YouTube's noncompliance with a court order mandating the removal of a defamatory video called "Pakhandi Baba ki Kartut." Yogi Ashwini, the founder of the animal charity NGO Dhyan Foundation, is purportedly the target of the posted video.

The notification was sent on November 21, 2024, by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate's Court in Ballard Pier. The controversy started when the Bombay High Court ordered YouTube to remove the controversial video on March 31, 2024.

How it all Started?

According to the Dhyan Foundation, the video includes offensive and defamatory content that has damaged Yogi Ashwini's and the organisation's reputations. The video is apparently still available outside India in spite of the court's order. In October 2023, the Dhyan Foundation accused Google of wilfully disobeying the court order in a contempt plea. Raju Gupta, the NGO's attorney, claims that Google has used delay tactics by requesting adjournments without good cause while reputational damage persists.

Response from YouTube

YouTube has responded by claiming that defamation is not a type of content that can be restricted under Section 69-A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, therefore invoking its immunity under the Act. Additionally, the platform said that civil courts, not criminal ones, are more appropriate for handling defamation cases.

Because the IT Act does not specifically prohibit criminal courts from hearing such cases, the judge rejected YouTube's concerns. According to the court's order, the respondent's filed authority is currently beneficial to the court. The process is mentioned in the aforementioned authority. Nevertheless, it is never stated that the criminal court lacks the authority to consider such an application. Thus, in the humble view of the court, the current application's maintainability will not be hindered by the ratio of the aforementioned authorities.

Google in Slew of Legal Obligations in India

Interestingly, this is not the first time Google has been involved in a dispute in the nation. Earlier this year, some Indian businesses claimed that Google was charging them a large 11-26% fee on payments made through alternative billing systems, prompting the antitrust authority to initiate a probe into the company's contentious user choice pricing system. Google was previously fined more than INR 2,200 Cr by the antitrust commission in 2022 for two different cases concerning abuse of power in the market for Android devices and its Play Store regulations.

In a different matter, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is looking into Google after receiving a complaint from the gaming platform WinZO. The tech giant has been charged with giving Rummy and daily fantasy sports (DFS) apps a substantial competitive advantage at the expense of other real-money gambling (RMG) apps.