Take Operation Sindoor like action to safeguard dignity of women in digital space, Madras High Court tells Centre

The Hindu

a day ago

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) must exhibit same interest, as it did in blocking over 1,400 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) during Operation Sindoor, when it comes to blocking websites that display private images/videos of women, the Madras High Court said on Tuesday (August 5, 2025).
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh agreed with senior counsel Abudu Kumar Rajaratnam, representing a woman lawyer whose private images/videos were all over the internet/digital media, that the dignity of every woman in the country must be considered as important as the dignity of the whole nation put together.
The woman advocate had filed a writ petition in the High Court seeking a direction to MeitY to block the porn websites and other digital platforms on which her private videos as well as images had been displayed after they were leaked by her former boyfriend in the social media.
Mr. Rajaratnam said, though the court, during the previous hearing, had ordered blocking of as many as six video links; the number of links in which his client's images/videos were displayed had now increased to 13 and some of the websites had resurfaced even after blocking.
On his part, central government senior panel counsel A. Kumaraguru told the court that MeitY had taken serious note of the orders passed by the court on the issue and decided to formulate a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for redressing grievances of women facing trouble in the digital space.
He said, it had been proposed to constitute an expert committee for formulating the SOP and that the terms of reference of the committee had also been laid down. He said, MeitY had blocked all the 13 video links which the senior counsel had shared with him and that they could not be accessed from Delhi and Mumbai.
However, those links were accessible in Tamil Nadu alone and it appeared to be a coordination issue with the local service providers, the panel counsel said and assured the court that the expert committee would study these technical issues too before formulating the SOP and submitting it before the court.
On his part, Mr. Rajaratnam brought it to the notice of the court that during Operation Sindoor, the Centre had observed that certain social media handles, including many operating from outside India, were actively propagating false and potentially harmful information.
Hence, the government had issued orders, under the Section 69A of the Information Technology Act 2000, for blocking all websites, social media handles and posts that were found to be against the interests of sovereignty and integrity of the country, security of the State as well as maintenance of public order.
Then, MeitY issued directions for blocking over 1,400 URLs whose content was found to be anti-India, false, misleading and communally sensitive. Most of those digital content had emerged from Pakistan based social media accounts and yet, the Centre successfully blocked them, Mr. Rajaratnam said.
He said, it was expected of the Centre to exhibit the same intensity of seriousness when a woman approaches the Ministry with a complaint that her private videos/images were being circulated in the internet and ensure the offending websites do not resurface even after blocking.