Delhi court drops Google India from lawsuit

NEW DELHI: The lawsuit on objectionable content against Google India took an unexpected turn on Thursday when the complainant Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, filed a no-objection certificate with a Delhi court for dropping name of the search giant's India subsidiary from the lawsuit.

Administrative Civil Judge Praveen Singh dropped the case against Google India, after Qasmi's NOC and Google India's plea that it does not operate any social networking website. Qasmi, who had filed a case against Google India and 21 others in December 2011, did not object to its name being dropped.

Counsel for the complainant, Santosh Pandey told ET that he filed an NOC with the court, only after Google India submitted an oath, saying that it doesn't control or operate any social networking website. "Lawsuit against Google's foreign entities still remains. We have not withdrawn case against Google Inc and Facebook Inc."

Only six parties now remain in the civil lawsuit i.e. Google Inc, Facebook India, Facebook Inc, Blogspot, YouTube and Orkut. The court also dropped cases against seven other entities, Exbii, IMC India, My Lot, Shyni Blog, Topix, Zombie Time and Boardreader as they were not found to be proper parties to the suit.