New Delhi: The Supreme Court has imposed a fine of Rs 1 Lakh each on Facebook Ireland, Facebook India, Google India, Google Inc, Microsoft and WhatsApp for not taking enough steps to take down videos of child porn and rape available on them. A bench of the apex court had asked the social media networks on April 16 to file affidavits explaining steps taken by them in detail.
“None of these entities has filed anything to show us the progress nor any of these entities is ready with any response pursuant to our April 16 order,” the bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Uday Umesh Lalit said on Friday and directed social media networks to file their responses by June 15 as per a report by Times of India.
The report said that the bench will accept their affidavits along with a fine of Rs 1 lakh each. The court had been hearing proceedings that got initiated after an NGO ‘Prajwala’ wrote a letter to the then CJI complaining about the rampant circulation of offensive videos on social networking sites. The court had taken up the issue and appointed advocate Aparna Bhat as amicus curiae.