Indian court gives social media users the right to see their takedown orders
Haryana police blocked a news network's Facebook page through an officer too junior to issue it, government agencies now send platforms nearly 1 275 blocking demands a day
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The Punjab and Haryana High Court building.
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Website of Punjab and Haryana High Court
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India's Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered a news network's Facebook page restored after finding that the police officer who blocked it lacked the rank to do so. In an October 5 order, the court also directed that authorities ordering a takedown must inform the user, notify the platform, and hand the user a copy of the order itself — a requirement the country's IT rules never spelled out.
The case began when Haryana 24 News Network found its Facebook page blocked in India on August 21, on the instruction of the superintendent of police in Yamuna Nagar. No notice arrived beforehand. Police defended the block by citing an extortion case against one of the company's directors, who they said was using the page to intimidate a victim and witnesses. The court observed that only an officer of deputy inspector general rank or higher may issue such an order; the superintendent's did not comply, and the page went back up.
The ruling lands in a system built for volume. Between March and July, the government sent Instagram, Facebook and YouTube nearly 200,000 takedown orders — close to 1,275 every day, each potentially covering hundreds of posts or accounts. Right to Information records quoted by The Indian Express show 2,312 blocking orders pushed to 19 platforms through the Sahyog portal in the year to October 2025: Instagram received nearly 100,000, Facebook around 80,000, YouTube almost 15,000. Meta has integrated its own API into the portal, so the path from a government desk to a muted account no longer requires a person at the platform's end.
What the system has never produced, short of litigation, is the order itself. The 2021 Information Technology Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules require no notice to the person whose content disappears. The court found one anyway in the "principles of natural justice": the state may still silence a page, but it must now put its name on the paper.
The network's page had been dark for six weeks by the time the court ordered it back up.