A PIL was filed by Sunitha Krishnan, who founded the NGO Prajwala, who received 200 videos of rape and gang rape from the victims and forwarded them to the Supreme Court bench which then ordered a CBI probe into the matter. Krishnan, who has rescued and rehabilitated more than 10,000 rape victims approached the Apex Court due to the increase in the number of rape cases and horrific videos of such incidents being uploaded on social media.
On March 22nd 2017, the bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta, set up a high level committee that comprised of Centre’s Information Technology officials with a view to coordinate with the internet giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Google to remove videos of rape, gang rape and child pornography from the internet. WhatsApp Inc was made a party to the suit by the Apex Court, and WhatsApp Inc agreed to extend its full cooperation to the committee set up in blocking sexually offensive clips and rape and gang rape videos from social media. On April 11th 2017, the Court issued a notice to WhatsApp Inc., seeking its response, stating that the petitioner may send a detailed email to the committee, make a presentation, if possible through video conferencing, to assist them with the matter.
The Supreme Court bench through its order had clearly stated that it is very clear that videos of such incidents cannot be put up in a public domain and that the committee would advise and assist the Court with the feasibility of ensuring that such videos not being made available to the general public.