Supreme Court quashes obscenity case against The Viral Fever
On 19 March, 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed a criminal case against The Viral Fever (TVF), a popular Indian production company, regarding alleged obscene content in its web series “College Romance”.
The Bench of Justices AS Bopanna and PS Narasimha overturned a March 2023 Delhi High Court judgment which deemed the show’s language obscene, profane, and vulgar, potentially corrupting young minds. The ruling stated that the provisions of Sections 67 and 67A of the Information Technology Act were not no violated.
The Court quashed the First Information Report (FIR) against the show’s director, Simarpreet Singh, writers Kunal Aneja and Abhishek Srivastava, and actors Apoorva Arora and Gagan Arora.
This High Court in its March 2023 judgment had emphasized the need to evaluate Indian morality within its own cultural context, urging stricter enforcement of IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY).
The Supreme Court’s ruling follows a challenge to the High Court verdict, prompting the Delhi police to respond to the matter in May 2023. The FIR in question was filed subsequent to the High Court’s decision.
The Delhi Police was represented by Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj with advocates Shreekant Neelappa Terdal, Sharath Nambiar, Sanjay Kr. Tyagi, Sridhar Potaraju, Nidhi Khanna, Karthik Jasra, Dr Arun Kumar Yadav, and Arvind Singh.
Senior Advocates Harish Salve, Mukul Rohatgi, Madhavi Divan, Sajan Poovayya, S Niranjan Reddy and KV Viswanathan (now a Supreme Court judge), along with Advocates Ameet Naik, Madhu Gadodia, Raghav Shankar, Misha Rohatgi, Pallavi Mishra, Sujoy Mukherji and Tarini Kulkarni, instructed by Naik Naik & Co. represented TVF, and the show’s director, writers, and actors over the course of the hearings.