Overview

• On July 23 a bench led by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justices K. Vinod Chandran and Joymalya Bagchi declined to entertain the petition by YouTube channel Third Eye.
• The petition sought an interim stay of the Bengaluru civil court’s July 18 ex parte injunction issued in a defamation suit filed by D. Harshendra Kumar.
• The Bengaluru order directed roughly 390 media outlets to remove or deindex nearly 9,000 links including news articles, videos and social media posts.
• Challengers argued that the gag order obstructs a state Special Investigation Team probe into alleged mass burials at Dharmasthala and breaches press freedom under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
• The Karnataka government constituted a Special Investigation Team that continues to gather evidence on accusations that a sanitation worker buried bodies of women and children between 1995 and 2014.