affecting the right of the people not to be defamed.
62.
In case, the act of retweeting or reposting is allowed to be
misused since it is still considered to be a vacant grey area of law
where the sapling of jurisprudence as to whether retweeting
defamatory content will be considered publication or not is yet to
take place, it will encourage people with ill intentions to misuse
this vacant field of law and therefore, despite retweeting the
defamatory content, the accused can thereafter conveniently take
a plea that he had merely retweeted a content.
63.
In this background, this Court holds that retweeting or
reposting defamatory content, without any disclaimer as to whether
the person so retweeting agrees or disagrees or has verified the
content so posted or not, and as to whether he projected to the world
at large, who care to follow him, that he believes the content to be
true so shared, a person would be republishing the original
defamatory content which has the potential of lowering the moral or
intellectual character or credit of a person.
64.
A sense of responsibility has to be attached while retweeting
content about which one does not have knowledge. Since in case
reputational injury is caused by defaming a person, the person doing
so by retweeting must attract penal, civil or tort action against him in
absence of any disclaimer.
65.
If we assume that the law exclusively attributes harm to the
original author of a post in cases of defamation, a potential loophole
emerges. Any case has to be adjudicated in its accompanying
circumstances and the background of not only the facts but the actors
Signature Not Verified
Digitally Signed
By:ZEENAT PRAVEEN
Signing Date:05.02.2024
16:25:50
CRL.M.C. 6347/2019
Page 38 of 50
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