Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Saturday ordered that the editor of NoCap, an independent Malayalam digital news organisation, be permitted to operate the platform's Facebook page after deleting certain comments notified by the Director General of Police and State Police Chief, Live Law reported.

Source: Live Law

Justice Ziyad Rahman A.A. passed the direction in the petition filed by journalist Hyder Ali K, the chief editor of NoCap, who had challenged the blocking of the media platform's Facebook page. The court recorded that Meta Platforms had only been instructed to remove certain harmful comments in some of the posts, and that no instruction had been given to block the Facebook page as such.

Source: Live Law

"In the light of the above it is ordered that the petitioner shall be permitted to operate the Facebook page after deleting the comments notified by the 3rd respondent or the officers subordinate to them. The necessary steps in this regard shall be taken by the 5th respondent and the petitioner may communicate the order to the 5th respondent," the court ordered, as reported by Live Law. The fifth respondent is Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook.

Source: Live Law

Page restricted since September 28

According to the petition, NoCap received an in-app notification on September 28 that its content in India was restricted pursuant to a notice from the Government of India and law enforcement under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The editor told the court he had not been given a copy of any blocking order or the reasons for the restriction.

Source: SFLC case bundle, WP(C) 36632/2026

The writ petition, filed on October 23, argued that blocking the entire page without identifying unlawful content violated the rights to freedom of speech and expression and to practise a profession under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. NoCap, established on November 20, 2023, had about 1.62 lakh Facebook followers before the restriction, the plea said, and its daily views fell sharply after September 27, according to figures cited in the petition.

Source: Bar and Bench

The High Court had earlier, on October 26, sought the responses of the Centre and the State on whether any order had been issued to Meta to block the page, and had issued notice to Meta, posting the case to November 5. Saturday's direction followed those proceedings. Counsel S. Prasanth, Varsha Bhaskar and Malavika K appeared for the petitioner.

Source: Bar and Bench