SMC Pneumatics (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Jogesh Kwatra

It is described as India's first case of cyber defamation, and the course uses it for a jurisdictional point rather than for the law of defamation: an Indian court assumed jurisdiction over defamation committed by e-mail and granted relief that operated worldwide. In a paper whose standing complaint is that cyberspace has no borders, it is the illustration that a court can still act, and that the reach of its order is not limited by the reach of the wrong.

An employee sent derogatory, defamatory, obscene and abusive e-mails about his employer to the company and to its subsidiaries around the world. The employer sued for a permanent injunction.

Finding a prima facie case, the court passed an ex parte ad interim injunction restraining the defendant from sending such e-mails to the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries anywhere in the world, and from publishing or transmitting any information, "in the actual world as also in cyberspace", derogatory or defamatory of the plaintiffs.

The course records the order rather than an extended course of reasoning, and the shape of the order is what to learn.

1. The relief was interim and ex parte. It rests on a prima facie case, not on a trial of the allegations. Nothing was finally adjudicated: the defendant's liability in defamation remained to be decided.
2. The order was framed by conduct, not by territory. It restrained the sending of such e-mails to the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries anywhere in the world, and the words "in the actual world as also in cyberspace" put the online and offline publication on the same footing. A court that has jurisdiction over the defendant can restrain what he does, wherever the effect is felt.
3. The medium did not create a new wrong. The cause of action was defamation as the general law knows it; the e-mail was how it was committed.

• On cyber defamation. Cite it as the first Indian case, and be precise that it is an interim injunction and not a final adjudication of the law of defamation. Say what the order restrained and stop there.
• On jurisdiction. Use it beside P.R. Transport Agency v. Union of India: that case shows a statutory deeming provision fixing the place of a contract, this one shows a court exercising jurisdiction over a wrong committed by e-mail and granting worldwide relief. Between them they are the civil half of the jurisdiction answer; the criminal half is s. 75(2) of the Information Technology Act, not a case.
• On remedies. It is a useful reminder that the remedies in this paper are not only penal. An injunction restraining further publication may be worth more to a claimant than a prosecution, and s. 77 of the Act preserves civil remedies alongside criminal ones.

What it does not decide: it lays down no test of defamation, no rule on the liability of an intermediary carrying the e-mails, and nothing about damages. It is not authority that Indian courts have jurisdiction over any online publication anywhere — jurisdiction there was over a defendant amenable to the court. Cite it for the fact of the order and its worldwide operation, with no more attached.