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2026 Supreme(Online)(Del) 17193
IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
Prathiba M. Singh, Vikas Mahajan, JJ
Delhi High Court Bar Association – Appellant
Versus
Kapil Kakar – Respondent
CONT.CAS.(CRL) 9/2026
For the Appellants/Petitioners: N. Hariharan, Sacchin Puri, Rakesh Tiku, Prem Lata Bansal, Vikram Singh Panwar, Kunal Malhotra, B.S. Dhir, Kajal Chandra, Vidhi Gupta, Amit Choudhary, Chandrika Gupta, Shrey Sharawat, Nitesh Mehra, Lakshy Kaushik, Aman Shreyas, Mannat Tipnis, Punya Rekha Angara, Aman Akhtar
For the Respondents: Kapil Kakar, Varun Pathak, Amee Rana, Akhil Shandilya, Vishwajeet Deshmukh, Tanuj Sharma, Deepak Gogia, Aadhar Nautiyal, Shivangi Kohli, Kapil Wadhwa, Priyanshi Bhageria, Abhishek K. Singh
Freedom of speech does not extend to scandalous allegations of corruption or collusion against judges without a lawful basis, as such acts undermine public confidence in the administration of justice and constitute contempt of court.
Headnote:(A) Contempt of Court - Freedom of Speech - Distinction between fair criticism and scandalous allegations - Allegations attributing corruption, collusion, or criminality to judges without any lawful basis are not legitimate criticism and constitute a direct interference in the justice delivery system. (Para 20, 22, 30)
(B) Intermediary Liability - Takedown of Content - Intermediaries are obligated to remove or disable access to information used to commit an unlawful act, including contemptuous material, to prevent the undermining of judicial institutions. (Para 26, 28)
(C) Procedural Compliance - Consent of Standing Counsel - The requirement of consent under Section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 is satisfied if the consent is obtained and placed on record, regardless of whether it was included in the advance copy served to the respondent. (Para 16, 23, 28)
Issues: Whether the allegations made in the videos against the judiciary amount to contempt of court and whether the blocking of the respondent's social media accounts was justified.
CORAM:
JUSTICE PRATHIBA M. SINGH
JUSTICE VIKAS MAHAJAN
Prathiba M. Singh, J.
(Oral)
1. This hearing has been done through hybrid mode.
CRL.M.A. 17927/2026
2. This is an application filed by the Petitioner under Section 528 - BNSS , seeking interim directions to the Respondents for Removal/Takedown/Disabling access to the impugned contemptuous material, restraint against further publication, preservation of metadata and disclosure of publication details.
3. At the outset, today, the Court has watched the three videos containing the allegedly contemptuous content, which have been placed on record by the Delhi High Court Bar Association.
4. Let the said videos be made a part of the record.
5. The Contemnor/Respondent No. 1– Dr. Kapil Kakar is appearing in person before the Court today.
6. On a query from the Court, he has informed the Court that the three videos which were impugned before this Court are no longer made available by him online on any platform as on date.
7. All the remaining Respondents namely Meta Platforms Inc., Google LLC, X Corp, LinkedIn Corporation have also confirmed to the Court that pursuant to the order passed by this Court dated 8th June, 2026 and the subsequent order dated 12th June, 2026, all the URLs that were provided by the Delhi High Court Bar Association in the present writ petition have all been either blocked or taken down.
8. If there are any further links or URLs which contain the impugned videos, the Registrar General of this Court shall immediately be informed of the same and intimation shall be given to the appropriate platform by the worthy Registrar General for removal/ blocking/ taking down of the same in terms of para 28 (iv) of the order dated 8th June 2026, which reads as under:
“28…. (iv) Respondent Nos. 2 to 5 shall take down, remove, disable access to, and block any subsequently discovered URLs containing the Subject Video(s) or any identical, mirrored, modified, edited, clipped, reproduced, re-uploaded, or substantially similar content, upon notification by the Registrar General of this Court within 24 hours of receiving such notification(s) and such notification(s) shall be deemed to be included as part of this order.”
9. The application is disposed of in these terms.
CRL.M.A. 23650/2026
10. This is an application filed by Respondent No. 1 seeking recusal of the Bench from hearing this matter.
11. Respondent No.1/contemnor submits that in view of the order dated 5th August, 2026, he does not wish to press this application anymore.
12. Accordingly, the same is dismissed as not pressed.
CRL.M.A. 24048/2026
13. This is an application filed by the Contemnor/Respondent No.1 seeking recall of the ex parte order dated 8th June, 2026 passed by this Court, in so far as all his social media accounts have been blocked.
14. As stated above, the Court has viewed all the three videos containing the alleged contemptuous content which have been shown to the Court today by the Petitioner.
15. The Court has also heard the Contemnor/Respondent No.1 and the ld. Senior Counsel appearing for the Petitioner, who is also the President of the Delhi High Court Bar Association.
16. The first objection raised by the Respondent No.1/ Contemnor is that the consent of ld. Standing Counsel (Criminal) u/s 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, was not obtained prior to the filing of the present contempt petition, as the copy served upon him did not have the consent.
17. It is secondly submitted that there was no affidavit filed in support of the petition in the copy that was served upon him.
18. Thirdly, it is argued that the relief of blocking of all the accounts of the Respondent No.1/Contemnor is a wide relief and only the impugned videos/content etc., ought to be blocked or taken down. Hence, the order dated 8th June, 2026 deserves to be recalled.
19. The submission on behalf of the Petitioner is that Sh. Sanjay Lao, Standing Counsel (Criminal) had given due consent for filing of the contempt petition, as
