“Congress-linked advocate Muhammad Ali Khan gets X users to delete tweets, read why the court should not have issued this order”, OpIndia, April 23, 2026
“OpIndia has removed its April 6 article about Meta India’s public policy team in accordance with a formal legal notice issued by the law firm Shergill, Hoda & Nasir on behalf of their clients and in view of an ex parte interim injunction issued by the Hon’ble Delhi High Court on April 15, 2026 in CS(OS) 318/2026. We do so not because we doubt the veracity of our reporting, but out of respect for the judicial process and appreciation of the Court’s interim orders, which are expressly binding on third parties. However, we think that our readers should be informed about the Court’s actual orders as well as the facts in our initial article that were based on verifiable, publicly available material and are still uncontested.
Muhammad Ali Khan an advocate with nearly two decades of experience before the Supreme Court of India, and his wife, plaintiff no 2, a former public policy manager at Meta India who resigned on January 20, 2026, filed the suit before the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi. X corp (formerly Twitter), two anonymous social media accounts using the handle @Jhunjhunuwala and @mujifren, and a John Doe fourth defendant representing unidentified individuals described in the pleadings as bots and coordinated troll accounts allegedly acting in concert with the named accounts are the defendants in the suit. The suit seeks damages for what the plaintiffs characterise as an ongoing, organised, and communally inflammatory defamation campaign against them, as well as a permanent injunction and mandatory orders for X Corp. to remove information and disclose the individuals behind the anonymous handles.
On April 15, 2026, Hon. Mr. Justice Subramonium Prasad heard the application for urgent interim relief entirely through video conferencing without informing the defendants. This process is referred to in law as an ex parte hearing. After reviewing the contested tweets, the Court determined that they were prima facie vulgar, derogatory, and communally provocative. It was especially concerned about a compilation of comments, Document No. 5, that contained threats of physical and sexual violence against the Plaintiffs. Against this context, the Court issued the sweeping interim injunction, prohibiting not just the listed Defendants, but any third party, from disseminating the content in question. It is also against this context that OpIndia, which was not named in the complaint, was not heard, and was not given the opportunity to present its editorial reasoning to the Court, received a legal notice requesting the removal of our article within days of the order being passed…….”
Read full article at opindia.com
