Delhi High Court Summon Members Of WhatsApp Group Linked To JNU Violence

The Delhi High Court directed Delhi police to summon all the members of the two WhatsApp groups "Friends of RSS" and "Unity against Left" linked to violence on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on January 5.

Three JNU professors, who were injured on the violence on January 5 in the JNU campus, filed a petition on Delhi High Court.  Ameet Parameswaran, professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Atul Sood, professor at Centre for Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, and Shukla Vinayak Sawant, a Professor at School of Arts and Aesthetics stated in the petition that the attacks were "prearranged" and "coordinated", planning for which had been done on various WhatsApp groups.

WhatsApp and Google have been directed by the Delhi High Court to preserve the data according to their policies. The counsel representing WhatsApp Replying to the court said that the company doesn't save the messages on its server and that those can be availed only through the members.

The courtwas informed that according to a Madras High Court judgment, WhatsApp wouldgive only the metadata including the last IP address from where it can be used.

 The court asked the police to summon all themembers of the two WhatsApp groups and seized their phones after the argument.

Court alsoasked Google to give the data available to them on their drive after thecounsel said that they will provide all the data that is available to them.

AdvocateRahul Mehra, appearing for the Delhi Police, informed the court that DelhiPolice had already asked the University to preserve the data of all the 135CCTVs.