ANI vs Wikipedia: News Agency Asks Delhi HC To Initiate Contempt Case Against Online Encyclopaedia

New Delhi: Asian News International (ANI) on Friday moved the Delhi High Court seeking contempt proceedings against Wikipedia.

ANI’s contention is that Wikipedia missed the court’s 36-hour deadline to remove a page on the Rs 2-crore defamation suit filed against it by the news agency.

Advocate Siddhant Kumar, who appeared for ANI, asked a bench of Delhi HC chief justice Manmohan and justice Tushar Rao Gedela to list the contempt plea on Monday as the free online and crowd-sourced information encyclopaedia failed to comply with the court’s order.

The two-judge bench initially asked Kumar to first approach a single judge who could refer the case to a division bench, before agreeing to take up ANI’s plea on Monday itself, when it is also due to hear Wikipedia’s petition against a single judge’s order passed on August 20.

The page in question, created after ANI sued Wikipedia over an allegedly defamatory description of the news agency, was ordered to be removed on October 16.

On August 20, the high court directed Wikipedia to disclose information about those who had edited the page within two weeks. ANI later filed a contempt plea alleging that Wikipedia failed to abide by the August 20 order.

The controversial page claimed that presiding judge Navin Chawla threatened to shut down Wikipedia in India, if necessary. It also claimed that Justice Chawla’s order, directing the information platform to disclose information about people who edited ANI’s Wikipedia page in the defamation suit, amounted to “censorship” and was a threat to “flow of information”.

Wikipedia then approached the high court’s division bench against the August 20 order.

On Monday, the high court expressed disapproval over the page and asked Wikipedia if it was willing to take down the page.

Observing that Wikipedia cannot threaten the judge, the bench said, “This page will have to be taken down by your client in case he even wants to be heard. You may be a powerful entity, but we live in a country governed by law, and we take pride in that.”