The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the police and social media platform X to take action against journalist Rana Ayyub for allegedly inflammatory posts she made between 2013 and 2017 about Hindu deities and Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar, Bar and Bench reported.
The court said the matter required urgent consideration and that X, the Delhi Police and the Union government would have to act in tandem.
It issued notice to Ayyub, X and the Delhi Police, seeking their responses to the plea by Thursday.
The observations came while Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav was hearing a petition by a lawyer named Amita Sachdeva seeking that six posts made by the journalist be taken down.
“The action is necessary in view of the highly derogatory, inflammatory and communal tweets posted by [Ayyub] pursuant to which an [first information report] has been registered on the orders of a competent court,” Bar and Bench quoted Kaurav as saying on Wednesday.
Sachdeva had also approached a Delhi court in January 2025 seeking an FIR against the journalist. The court had then ordered that a case be filed, following which the police registered an FIR the next day.
Ayyub had at the time told Scroll that her posts on X did not violate any legal provision. She had said that the complaint against her was “yet another attempt to intimidate and silence my voice”.
Sachdeva claimed in her petition before the High Court that Ayyub had insulted Hindu deities Sita and Ram, Savarkar, and Hindu nationalism, Bar and Bench reported. The lawyer claimed that the posts could disrupt communal harmony.
Sachdeva added that she had approached X Corp’s Grievance Appellate Committee, which declined to order the posts to be taken down, saying that the matter was sub judice, Live Law reported.
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