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Synopsis

The Delhi Court on Thursday summoned Wikimedia Foundation over the deletion of the Wikipedia profile of author and BJP Spokesperson Tuhin A. Sinha.

Additional Sessions Judge Twinkle Wadhwa, of the Saket District Court, was hearing a suit filed by Tuhin Amar Singh, a well-known author and national media panelist for Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) through Advocate Mukesh Sharma and Advocate Raghav Awasthi against the Wikimedia Foundation.

The suit seeks a mandatory injunction against Wikimedia foundation and Union of India, Electronics and Information Technology directing them to reinstate the Wikipedia profile of Sinha as subsisting till March 29, 2022, along with all the sources cited therein.

Sinha in his plea stated that his Wikipedia profile existed since 2006, for over 15 years since his first book was launched, and had detailed information about his professional profile and that the Wikimedia Foundation is the organization that runs the Wikipedia platform, and also provides the open-source wiki software MediaWiki for free.

The plea also stated that Sinha’s Wikipedia entry was an extremely important source of information on the type of work that he had done in the past as a politician as well as an author for a lot of potential collaborators, and as a result, he has lost business and personal equity as a result of the same. It was further stated that the sudden deletion of his profile is also severely defamatory as it implies to the Wikimedia users and potential business collaborators that his page contained unfounded and exaggerated statements about him.

Sinha stated that the loss, in this case, has not been quantified precisely, but it is approximately Rs.25,00,000/-. It is also stated that since the deletion of his profile many of his current and former collaborators, including book publishers and political associates, have called him to express their dismay.

“This has also resulted in a massive loss of political equity because people were led to believe that his Wikipedia page was deleted by the Wikimedia Foundation as it was full of lies, misrepresentations, and unattributed exaggerations and that people, including them, now believe he is an untrustworthy individual,” the plea added.

The plea further stated that the said deletion violates the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, as well as the relevant deletion guidelines of the Wikimedia foundation.

“The Plaintiff is aggrieved by the violation of the rights conferred upon him by law as well as the contractual breach that has led him to lose his profile”, the plea read.

Case Title: Tuhin Amar Sinha v. Wikimedia Foundation & Ors.