The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed a “claimable” motion aimed at suing Twitter CEO Elon Musk in connection with the suspension of user accounts on the platform.
Judge Yashwant Varma said: It dismissed the allegations as “totally misunderstood.”
The motion states that Mr. Musk has a “very different stance on free speech” and that “speech should not be restricted by a platform unless it violates the laws of that country.” The application relied on his Musk tweets to confirm this point.
When the matter was brought up, the court asked Raghav Awasthi, the lawyer who was representing the user, whether he intended to pursue the matter seriously. Awasthi said his instructions were to press for enforcement.
The High Court therefore found that the application had been “totally misunderstood.” The court found that “a legal entity (Twitter) was already represented.” The Court then imposed a fee of Rs 25,000 on him.
The complaint, filed by Mukesh Sharma, is a petition by a woman who claims she used her account to publish educational content on literature, women’s rights, Indian culture, non-violence, equality, politics and history. The woman also claimed that her account had been suspended without any notice.
The federal government responded to the woman’s objections by stating that if some or a few of the content were illegal, the platform would be prohibited from doing so. It said it could take appropriate steps to only remove the information and not block the user account outright.
For the next hearing the matter listed on December 19th.