Delhi High Court seeks Twitter's response on lawsuit filed by Abhijit Iyer Mitra over 'inaccessible' account

Justice Mini Pushkarna issued a summons to the microblogging website on Abhijit Iyer Mitra's lawsuit and granted it time to file its response.

The Delhi High Court on November 1 sought Twitter's response on a lawsuit filed by Abhijit Iyer Mitra, seeking restoration of his account on the website that has been "unilaterally banned" and made inaccessible to his followers.

Justice Mini Pushkarna issued a summons to the microblogging website on Mr. Iyer's lawsuit and granted it time to file its response. "Issue summons. Written submissions (be filed) in 30 days," the judge said. The court also sought the Centre's stand on the lawsuit.

In his plea, Mr. Iyer said following his tweet in relation to the bail granted by the Supreme Court to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair in a criminal case, Twitter "unilaterally" banned his account, thereby making it "completely inaccessible" for him to engage with his 1.5 lakh followers on the platform.

The plea also seeks a direction to the Centre to "take action" against Twitter for suspending the plaintiff's account "without following the procedure prescribed by law".

Appearing for the plaintiff, advocate Raghav Awasthi argued that his client is a fairly "renowned public figure" and the ban is in violation of the applicable information technology rules, and being a defence analyst, if he does not disseminate his views on the war in Ukraine, it would harm his reputation.

"I had posted something and had disclosed no private information. I had merely disclosed who put surety for the bail of Mohammed Zubair, given by the Supreme Court in July, and merely on the basis of this tweet, my access to my Twitter followers has been curtailed, without following the procedure laid down under the IT rules," he said.