The Supreme Court on Wednesday, July 23, declined to hear a plea challenging a gag order passed by a Bengaluru court in connection with the Dharmasthala burial case. The court asked the petitioner, YouTube channel Third Eye, to approach the Karnataka High Court instead first.
The ex-parte injunction was issued by Judge Vijaya Kumar Rai of the 10th Additional City Civil and Sessions Court. It restrained the media from publishing any allegedly defamatory content related to the Dharmasthala temple and its managing family. The order also seeks the removal of 8,842 links, including articles, YouTube videos, tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts, and Reddit threads.
The petition filed by Third Eye, which was among nearly 338 media outlets and individuals restrained by the order, was mentioned before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai.
The petitioner’s counsel told the court that the Bengaluru civil court passed the ex parte gag order within three hours of the case being filed, asking for the removal of nearly 9,000 links across the internet. “This is in the context of a Special Investigation Team set up by the Karnataka government to look into the allegations,” he said.
However, the bench, which also included Justices K Vinod Chandran and Joymalya Bagchi, refused to intervene and advised the petitioner to approach the Karnataka High Court first. “We cannot discourage the High Courts,” the CJI said.
The gag order was issued on July 18 by a Bengaluru City Civil and Sessions Court in a defamation suit filed by Harshendra Kumar D, the younger brother of Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Veerendra Heggade.
The court barred any content, whether on YouTube, social media, websites, or print, that it deemed defamatory towards Harshendra Kumar, his family, their institutions, or the Sri Manjunathaswamy temple in Dharmasthala, until further orders. A “John Doe” injunction was granted, asking platforms to take down any such content already online.
The case relates to an FIR filed based on the complaint of a sanitation worker, who alleged that he was tasked with burying the bodies of women and children in Dharmasthala between 1995 and 2014.
The Third Eye channel has claimed that the gag order was obtained by “misleading” the Bengaluru court. They argued that the order obstructs a state-level investigation into serious allegations involving the temple. The petition contended that the court was wrongly informed that the complaint did not name or implicate the plaintiff or his family when, in fact, the complaint does mention the temple and its supervisors.