Tak­ing cog­ni­sance of the pos­si­ble mis­chief and po­ten­tial dan­ger of the of­fen­sive videos of Sak­shi Bhard­waj on YouTube, the Delhi Small Causes Court of Jas­jeet Kaur has or­dered Google to re­move these blas­phe­mous videos and all other of­fen­sive con­tent den­i­grat­ing and de­mean­ing the Sikh re­li­gion within 7 days.

While the po­lice, the In­tel­li­gence agen­cies have ei­ther failed or did not take it up se­ri­ously, or worse are in ca­hoots with Sak­shi Bhard­waj or her men­tors, it was a Delhi Small Causes Court of Civil Judge Jas­jeet Kaur in Delhi, who on a pe­ti­tion seek­ing ex-parte judge­ment by In­dian Rail­way of­fi­cial G S Walia, took cog­ni­sance of the blas­phe­mous and dan­ger­ous speech of Delhi-based girl Sakhshi Bhard­waj and has di­rected Google to re­move all such con­tent from YouTube within 7 days.

Sak­shi Bhard­waj, a for­mer JNU stu­dent has been spew­ing venom against Sikhs in gen­eral, Sikh he­roes and even Sikh Gu­rus on YouTube and What­sapp. The Jammu po­lice are on record to say that de­spite their best ef­forts they have not been able to trace her nor has Face­book been able to iden­tify and es­tab­lish her true iden­tity.

While cur­tail­ing fake news has the at­ten­tion of in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned gi­ants like Google and Face­book, par­tic­u­larly in the wake of wide­spread al­le­ga­tions of how fake news im­pacted the US gen­eral elec­tion in which Don­ald Trump won, there is seems lit­tle con­cern for stop­ping hate-filled, deroga­tory and blas­phe­mous videos on the in­ter­net.

Vir­tu­ally hound­ing the Sikh com­mu­nity over the In­ter­net since the last many weeks, this young fe­ro­ciously vi­o­lent-look­ing lady, for rea­sons best known to her, has been mouthing lan­guage so foul and de­grad­ing that the Sikhs are up in arms against her, with wide­spread street protests in Jammu, seek­ing her im­me­di­ate ar­rest.

As per avail­able in­for­ma­tion, two FIRs have been reg­is­tered in Ud­ham­pur (FIR No. 393/​2017) and Gandhi Na­gar (141/​2017)  po­lice sta­tions. The South Jammu SP Sandeep Choud­hary has re­port­edly told the me­dia that they are work­ing along­side the Cy­ber Cell to un­der­stand the method­ol­ogy used to make her videos vi­ral.

Civil judge Jas­jeet Kaur granted an ex-parte in­terim in­junc­tion in favour of pe­ti­tioner GS Walia, chief com­mer­cial in­spec­tor in North­ern Rail­ways, who had moved court against Google In­dia for re­moval of the of­fen­sive videos in cir­cu­la­tion on YouTube and in­junc­tion against up­load­ing sim­i­lar videos.

In the chang­ing so­cio-po­lit­i­cal sce­nario where hate rules, a good cross-sec­tion of the me­dia is sub­servient, the po­lice and politi­cians are qui­etly toe­ing the ra­bidly right-wing line, the Mus­lims, Sikhs, Dal­its, the poor and po­lit­i­cal dis­senters are most vul­ner­a­ble. Reg­u­lar at­tempts are made to tar­get Sikhs and Mus­lims to de­grade their sta­tus and to show­case them in an in­te­gra­tive man­ner, with the modus operandi be­ing dif­fer­ent for both of them. The at­tacks on Mus­lims and Is­lam are phys­i­cal and di­rect, whereas, in case of Sikhs, they are more psy­cho­log­i­cal and per­ni­cious. Ear­lier on, they were sur­rep­ti­tious, now at times, they are vo­cal and fla­grant.

“ Vir­tu­ally hound­ing the Sikh com­mu­nity over the In­ter­net since the last many weeks, this young fe­ro­ciously vi­o­lent-look­ing lady, for rea­sons best known to her, has been mouthing lan­guage so foul and de­grad­ing that the Sikhs are up in arms against her, with wide­spread street protests in Jammu, seek­ing her im­me­di­ate ar­rest.”

It is very sur­pris­ing that even though many FIRs have been reg­is­tered against her in dif­fer­ent states, still she is out of the reach of the po­lice. This is not dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand con­sid­er­ing that she was made to es­cape by ac­tivists of the Hindu Ma­hasabha when the Jammu po­lice were on her heels.

What is most sur­pris­ing is that Mr Walia had to move court as his com­plaints to Google did not move the world gi­ant.

Wali­a’s coun­sel Gurmeet Singh told the court that the of­fen­sive videos fea­tur­ing Sak­shi Bhard­waj, said to be a res­i­dent of Ber Sarai in south Delhi, con­tains hate speeches and of­fen­sive re­marks against Sikh Gu­rus and Sikhism and have been on so­cial me­dia for many days and is likely to spread com­mu­nal dishar­mony. Walia had come across the videos in Au­gust. Ad­vo­cate Gurmeet Singh also played some of the videos for the court.  

“Af­ter go­ing through the con­tents of the plaint and watch­ing videos, it prima fa­cie ap­pears that up­loader of the videos has made deroga­tory re­marks against Sikh Gu­rus and their fam­ily mem­bers and its fol­low­ers are likely to feel great in­sult of the re­li­gious sen­ti­ments by con­tin­ued cir­cu­la­tion of videos of Sak­shi Bhard­waj on so­cial me­dia.” says the or­der, a copy of which is in the pos­ses­sion of WSN.

“So­cial har­mony and law and or­der sit­u­a­tion is likely to get ad­versely af­fected if Google In­dia is not re­strained from the pub­li­ca­tion of deroga­tory videos.”

Jas­jeet Kaur, Judge, Delhi Small Causes Court

“So­cial har­mony and law and or­der sit­u­a­tion is likely to get ad­versely af­fected if Google In­dia is not re­strained from the pub­li­ca­tion of deroga­tory videos,” the court ob­served.

“Ac­cord­ingly,  I deem it fit to grant ex parte in­terim in­junc­tion in favour of the plain­tiff,” the court or­dered re­strain­ing Google In­dia from up­load­ing or pub­lish­ing any videos con­tain­ing hate speech and deroga­tory re­marks against any re­li­gion and in par­tic­u­lar against Sikh re­li­gion.

Re­spect­ing the sen­ti­ments of the com­plainant and aware that there is much more on YouTube that is of­fen­sive to the Sikhs, the court or­dered that, “Google In­dia is also di­rected to re­move all such videos fea­tur­ing Sak­shi Bhard­waj al­ready in cir­cu­la­tion on so­cial me­dia in­clud­ing videos on YouTube con­tain­ing hate speeches about Sikh Gu­rus within 7 days.

The or­der of the Delhi court, in fact, goes be­yond Sak­shi Bhard­waj and con­tains a blan­ket or­der that any­thing of­fen­sive against the Sikh Gu­rus and Sikh re­li­gion is to be re­moved.

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It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how Google re­acts to this. Fur­ther­more, this or­der should en­able other com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­larly the Mus­lims, against whom to there are many such of­fen­sive di­a­tribes by el­e­ments in­im­i­cal to Is­lam and peace.