The main legal point established is the requirement for specific and cogent material to support injunctions, the importance of addressing criticism and self-correction in legal processes, and the need for judicial oversight in internet policing.

G.S. PATEL, J.

1. Not on board. Mentioned. Taken on board.

2. This matter was moved in urgency on Friday, 1st July 2016. On that day I passed an order setting out why I was unprepared to grant the injunction in the terms that were then placed before me. I found the reliefs to be overbroad. They were directed against to entire websites. I left it open to the Plaintiffs to renew that application after placing on an Affidavit additional and more precise information and data about offending links that point to illicit downloads of the film in question, Great Grand Masti. This film’s scheduled release is 22nd July 2016.

3. Mr. Dhond renews the application today. He does so on the basis of an Additional Affidavit dated 4th July 2016 affirmed by one Mr. Ayan Roy Chowdhury, the Plaintiffs’ general counsel. This Affidavit sets out considerably more detail. I propose to consider some of the material of this Affidavit. To begin with, the Affidavit points out that someone named of Wasim Akram Ansari posted a message to Twitter on 29th July 2016 reporting the leak of Great Grand Masti. A copy of this Twitter post is at page 6 to this Affidavit (it is also annexed to the Plaint). The post appears to have a screen shot of a scene from the film. In the bottom right hand corner of that screenshot is a clearly imprinted legend: “censor copy”. On that very day, the Plaintiffs were also notified by the film’s actors about a possible, and entirely illegal, leak of this film. As the present Affidavit itself says, there are two possibilities: either the entire film was leaked or someone obtained an image of that solitary scene. But even the second scenario posits that any person who took such a screen shot would, at a minimum, have had to have access to the film. That access is clearly unauthorised. But this was all previously available material, and it did not, on its own, form a sufficient basis for the injunction.

4. Mr. Dhond then points out that there are now other screenshots at pages 60 to 62, Exhibit “C” to the present Affidavit of messages from other Twitter users. These Twitterati seem to have obtained multiple screenshots of the film. The second and third messages report a leak of the film. What is curious is the first message at page 60. This says that the second half of this film is “Supebb”. Even allowing for the linguistic damage caused by this medium, there can be no mistake about what the message conveys. It extols the films, and it extols a specific portion of it. That would be impossible without a viewing. Any such viewing outside the certification board is illicit.

5. It is in this context, and following my previous order, that the Plaintiffs have now over the weekend engaged the services of two professional anti-piracy agencies, viz., Aiplex Software Private Limited and Markscan, with a mandate to analyse potentially infringing web-based links to illicit downloads of the films. Both agencies deployed some software and web-based technology, including web crawlers. They identified a list of potential URLs on different web pages that, prima facie, point to specific illicit downloads of the film.

6. Paragraph 14 of the Affidavit makes an assertion on oath that the period between 29th June and 2nd July saw a sharp surge in number of infringing links and URLs. The Affidavit also says that clips of the film were uploaded to You-Tube on 3rd July 2016. The Plaintiffs’ complained and sent out take down notices through Markscan and Aiplex. Those clips have now been removed.

7. The Plaintiffs say that they have not been able to locate the culprits, but they have approached the Cyber Police Station, Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai. Paragraph 17 and 18 of this Affidavit set out the potential loss and damage likely to be caused to the Plaintiffs.

8. In fairness, when I pointed out that the cast of the prayers in the Motion is much too wide and relates to entire websites, Mr. Dhond agreed to amend these. He now places a draft amendment to the Mo