A Delhi court has ordered several social networking companies including Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft India, Google and Orkut to remove some images from their websites.The court, hearing a petition filed by Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi objecting to images hurting religious sentiments, said, "the photographs shown by the plaintiff having content of defamation and derogation against the sentiments of every community.""Defendants are further directed to remove the same from their social networking sites...," the court added.

Over the last few months, Information Technology minister Kapil Sibal had asked social networking giants like Google and Facebook to ensure offensive material is deleted. Mr Sibal denied that this amounts to censorship; he also said that the government will have to intervene because the companies have not cooperated."I suggested that these platforms should evolve a mechanism on their own to ensure that such contents are removed as soon as they get to know of it... I have told them that this cannot go on," Mr Sibal had said.