Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma said that there is a legal vacuum on the aspect of whether retweeting amounts to defamation but it cannot be ignored that in the digital age, retweeting of defamatory content has the potential to magnify defamatory allegations and it has significant ramifications on a person’s reputation.
The Court also said that when a person with significant following on X (formerly Twitter) retweets a post, masses would consider it as endorsement or acknowledgment of what is said in the original tweet.
Thus, Retweeting of defamatory content must invite penal, civil as well as tort action if the person retweeting the same does not attach a disclaimer.
The Bench returned these findings while rejecting Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s plea seeking quashing of a defamation case filed against him by one Vikas Sankrityayan alias Vikas Pandey who claims to be a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is founder of social media page ‘I Support Narendra Modi’.
Source: Barandbench
