Youtube told to delete court video

Mumbai: Taking serious note of a secretly-shot video that shows proceedings of a Bombay high court judge’s courtroom, the HC on Friday directed YouTube to delete the video immediately. The HC also issued notices to the video-sharing website as well as search engine Google so that they could also be made a party into the contempt proceedings. The HC on Monday banned litigants and the members of public from bringing mobile phones into courtrooms of HC.

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Anuja Prabhudessai sought response from these entities as to why action under contempt of court should not be initiated against them for allowing such contemptuous video to be uploaded on their website. The bench issued these notices while hearing contempt petition filed by Bombay Bar Association against a lawyer, 15 other individuals as well as entities for their involvement in the secret video. The accused parties allegedly upload the video of court proceedings online and made defamatory comments about judges and the judicial system.

Though there are around 16 respondents including advocate Nilesh Ojha, the HC did not issue notice to Mr Ojha and two other respondents because transcript of their alleged contemptuous utterance was not filed before the HC. The bench has asked the petitioner to submit transcript of these people within three days.

The HC bench admitted this petition for hearing after senior counsel Rafique Dada on behalf of petitioner informed the court that the association has obtained approval from Advocate General (AG) of Maharashtra Rohit Deo for initiating contempt action against respondents. The AG’s permission was required in this case because the HC has powers to initiate contempt proceedings against anybody but if a person wants to file such petitioner under the Contempt of Courts Act, AG’s consent is necessary.