No FaceBook to malign, HC tells 2 lawyers

Chennai: The Madras high court has restrained two lawyers W Peter Rameshkumar and Manikandan Vathan from publishing or circulating any message or material scandalising the judiciary and 'everyone part of the institution' on any social media platform including WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, group messages and YouTube. The two lawyers are already serving suspension, after being prohibited by Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry from appearing before any court or tribunal for alleged acts of professional misconduct, pending disciplinary proceedings.
Passing the restraint order after a group of senior women lawyers moved a joint petition lambasting innuendos originating from two mobile numbers belonging to the advocates, a division bench of Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice K Ravichandra Baabu also directed 'Facebook (also the owner of WhatsApp Inc) and YouTube Google India Pvt Ltd to take steps to 'block objectionable materials containing scandalous attack, on women in particular', originated from the two mobile phones. The Chennai city cyber cell police shall render necessary assistance to the two online giants in this regard, the judges said.
The order was necessitated after senior advocate Indira Jaising mentioned the issue on February 4, and sought guidelines or protocol for protecting women engaged as part of justice delivery system in various capacities, from scandalous attack through electronic means of communication.
In its order, the bench said Peter Ramesh Kumar had circulated voice messages through various social media tools such as Whatsapp and YouTube containing scandalous allegations against the judiciary and women lawyers, after his counter-affidavit filed in response to contempt proceedings initiated against him in September 2015, was not published in the print media. These messages were shared, spread and re-posted by Manikandan Vathan, said the bench.
In their affidavit advocate Sudha Ramalingam and five other woman advocates sought a direction to the social media portal managers to remove all "messages, written/ audio /video communicated through SMS/ MMS and all other methods of electronic communications or print and broadcast media emanating from mobile phone numbers 9344131170 and 9944114499, respectively, or any other mobile of the two lawyers, or through their e-mails or other communications and re-posting in any form, materials that contain slanderous or obscene or scurrilous or sexually coloured or derogatory messages, audio, visual and written, against women lawyers or women engaged in the justice delivery system."
They said the portal managers are duty-bound to remove the posts, and added, "the posts are offensive under Sections 67 and 67A of Information Technology Act, as they are obscene, scandalous, vexatious, mischievous and defamatory of women in general and against Article 51A of the Constitution."