The Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft over their reluctance to block advertisements on pre-natal sex determination.
A bench presided over by Justice Dipak Misra directed them to immediately appoint internal expert bodies to identify and remove such advertisements.
Explaining that its only objective was to help check the growing sex ratio imbalance, and that the problem was “likely to affect the human race”, the bench told the companies, “You can't violate the laws of the country. You must be responsive to Indian law.”
The court also questioned the companies on their failure to comply with legal prohibition of pre-natal sex determination in India while there were precedents of their compliance in foreign countries.
The court was hearing a PIL by Sabu Mathews George seeking directions to ban such content online.
The search engines maintained that there were several handicaps in setting up internal expert committees to track violations.
Approving a nodal agency set up by the central government in this regard, the court directed that it should be advertised so that people come to know about it and can approach the body in case of any advertisements on sex determination that need to be removed within 36 hours.
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