YouTube channel moves Supreme Court against Bengaluru court's media gag in Dharmasthala temple burial case

YouTube Channel, Third Eye, has moved the Supreme Court against a Bengaluru city civil and sessions court order restraining media houses and YouTube channels from publishing and circulating any defamatory content against Harshendra Kumar D, brother of Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Veerendra Heggade, in relation to the Dharmasthala temple burial case.

The appeal has been filed directly before the Supreme Court from the sessions court.

As per the plea, the order from sessions court was secured through a calculated abuse of judicial process and material misrepresentation by Harshendra Kumar (plaintiffs) and it directly obstructs a high-level state criminal investigation into allegations of mass burials and serious crimes linked to the influential Dharmasthala temple.

"It is a frontal assault on the freedom of speech and press (Article 19(1)(a)) and the foundational principles of natural justice and due process (Article 21)," the plea states.

The case arose after several media reported the allegations made by a sanitation worker claiming that he had buried several bodies in Dharmasthala.

The sanitation worker also filed a complaint in which he stated that he was employed by the Dharmasthala temple where supervisors had threatened him and forced him to bury bodies. However, he did not name any specific individuals as being involved in a crime.

Harshendra Kumar, who is the Secretary of Sri Manjunathaswamy Temple institutions in Dharmasthala, then filed a defamation suit in which he highlighted a list of 8,842 links, which include 4,140 YouTube videos, 932 Facebook posts, 3,584 Instagram posts, 108 news articles, 37 Reddit posts, and 41 tweets to the court.

Before the court, Kumar alleged that false and defamatory statements were being made online and in the media against him, his family, the temple and its institutions, despite there being no accusations against them in the first information reports (FIRs).

The court was informed that one of the FIRs from 2012 had already led to an acquittal, and another recent FIR made no mention of him or his institutions.

Additional City Civil & Sessions Judge Vijaya Kumar Rai then restrained the defendants and unknown persons from posting or sharing any defamatory material across digital, social or print media until the next hearing.

It also passed a mandatory injunction directing the removal or de-indexing of already published defamatory content.

"The Court cannot ignore the fact that though the reputation of every citizens is very important, when an allegation is made against the institution, and temple, it affects wider range of people including the employees and students who are studying in various colleges and schools. Therefore, even a single false and defamatory publication would seriously affect the functioning of the institutions," the Bengaluru court order stated.

This led to the appeal before the Supreme Court.