Chennai: “What if she had been my daughter,” an emotional Justice N Anand Venkatesh said with moist eyes in the Madras High Court on Wednesday, while directing the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to take necessary steps to detect, remove, and block private images and videos of a woman advocate, recorded by her male partner without her consent and circulated widely on the internet through digital platforms.
The petitioner stated that she fell in love with a man during her days in college and spent private moments with him after he promised to marry her. However, she was unaware at the time that he had recorded their intimate moments on his mobile phone without her knowledge. It was only after the images and videos went viral that she lodged a police complaint against him and a WhatsApp group administrator on April 1.
The petitioner also made a representation to MeitY on June 18, urging the Ministry to issue instructions to all intermediaries, websites, pornographic platforms, and telecommunication service providers to take down the objectionable images and videos by employing hash matching technology and AI-based content recognition tools, such as photo DNA, Google content safety hash checkers and other such technological solutions.
MeitY failed to act upon the petitioner’s representation though, forcing her to file the present writ petition. Her counsel submitted that despite elaborate orders of the Delhi High Court on this subject in the past, the Ministry fails to act fast enough after receipt of complaints from young women subjected to such public humiliation.
Expressing displeasure at such behaviour by the Ministry, Justice Venkatesh ordered that his direction must be implemented by the Centre within 48 hours. The woman, an advocate, was undergoing great mental agony because the non-consensual images and videos were getting uploaded, shared, re-uploaded, and transmitted not only through pornographic websites but also private messaging applications and social media pages, he observed.
The judge further called for a compliance report from MeitY by July 14 and decided to keep the writ petition pending for issuing further directions to all stakeholders in order to ensure that young women do not get subjected to such trauma in the future. He suo motu included the Director General of Police as one of the respondents in the matter.
Justice Venkatesh grew emotional at this stage and said: “I was just thinking, what if this woman lawyer had been my daughter.”
He also observed that the petitioner was able to fight the stereotypes in society because she happened to be a lawyer.
“Fortunately, she is in this profession and she has the help of all of us here. What happens to some silent sufferers who cannot gather the courage to fight?” the judge observed and said that it was the duty of the State as well as the constitutional courts to ensure the fundamental right to dignity of every individual.
