Delhi HC fines online education firm Rs 1 Lakh over tweets

New Delhi: As reported by Scroll, the Delhi High Court has rejected a defamation case filed by LawSikho, an online legal education company, against four persons who criticised the quality of its law courses on the social media platform X.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on LawSikho after finding that the company did not reveal the full conversation in the thread.

Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora ruled that allegedly defamatory social media posts on X must be evaluated within the context of the entire conversation thread, rather than being considered in isolation.

“The court has to consider that the nature of the medium is casual and fast-paced, conversational in character and an elaborate analysis of a 140-character tweet [or even more than that] may be disproportional,” Arora said. “Importantly, the absorption by the reader and the reaction to the post are impressionistic and fleeting.”

The court observed that Ramanuj Mukherjee, a LawSikho representative, initiated a discussion on X with a tweet, which prompted responses from two lawyers criticising the quality of LawSikho's courses.

LawSikho subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit, alleging that the tweets would harm their business and jeopardise the value of their shares on the National Stock Exchange. In contrast, the defendants argued that their tweets were fair commentary, which is legally protected from defamation claims.

The judge ruled that the defendants' tweets weren't defamatory, as they were a response to Mukherjee's intentional provocation.

The High Court pointed out that an anonymous tweet was meant to provoke and insult, but Mukherjee, who started the conversation, should have maintained “the proverbial thick skin” while dealing with comments from an anonymous account.

Unlike newspapers or magazines, conversational social media platforms such as X are “not perceived by the users of the said platform as a reliable verified source of information.”. said the judge

Furthermore, the court observed that LawSikho failed to report the issue to the grievance officer as required by the Information Technology Rules before filing a lawsuit.