The safe harbour provision mentioned under section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, protects online intermediaries such as social media platforms from legal liability for user-generated content posted on their platforms. This protection applies only if they follow due diligence and promptly remove unlawful content upon receiving court or government orders or gaining actual knowledge of such illegal material.

Under Section 79(3)(b), intermediaries lose this immunity if they fail to remove or disable access to unlawful content after receiving “actual knowledge” or a notification from a court or government authority. The provision requires intermediaries to take down or block access to such content within 36 hours of receiving a court order or government direction declaring the content obscene, prohibited, or otherwise unlawful.

A bench of Justices Prathiba M. Singh and Amit Sharma observed while hearing a petition to trace a missing boy. In September 2024, the court expanded the case’s scope due to delays by social media intermediaries in sharing information with law enforcement. Notices were issued seeking their SOPs. In April last year, the Centre said 65 intermediaries had joined the Sahyog Portal, except X, which later sought discharge from the case.

The court emphasised that investigative agencies cannot be expected to approach multiple social media platforms individually, especially in urgent situations, and it would be impractical for investigating officers from different police stations across the country to access 30–40 separate platforms to obtain information. It further noted that several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have centralised portals for sharing such data, underscoring the need for a similar streamlined system.

“The existing safe harbour provisions in the opinion of this court do not give you protection to that extent that you can refuse and say that in the case of crimes we cannot come on board. …. That’s the feeling that we have…,” the court said to X’s lawyer, Akhil Sibal.

It added, “Insofar as the court’s conviction is concerned, we are very clear it is impossible for the investigative agencies to go on the portal of different platforms to obtain information, especially if it is urgent. You can imagine, every IO of every police station in the country can’t go to 30-40 platforms to get information. It is impossible. You look at any country in the world, whether it is the US or the UK, everyone has a centralised prime portal where all data has to be. There is no doubt about that….”

This came after X’s counsel argued that the present petition, which concerned tracing a missing boy, had a limited scope and therefore issues relating to onboarding intermediaries onto the Sahyog portal could not be examined within it. “

He also referred to the earlier stand of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), which had described onboarding onto the Sahyog portal as merely an “administrative measure” and, before the Karnataka High Court, as an optional mechanism.

Sibal further submitted that I4C had never indicated any difficulty in obtaining data through its resource portal or in making requests, but had only stated that such requests were occasionally objected to by platforms. He added that the resource portal had been functioning effectively and pointed out that similar issues were pending before various High Courts, including two appeals challenging the Karnataka High Court’s September 24, 2025, judgment and two petitions before the Bombay High Court questioning the validity of the Centre’s Sahyog portal. To be sure, the Karnataka high court in September had upheld the Centre’s authority to issue content blocking orders via the Sahyog portal.

The court, however, adjourned the matter after the Centre’s lawyer sought an adjournment, and the court thus granted Centre time to make submissions on X’s discharge application.

To be sure, the high court in August last year had also remarked that X’s unwillingness to join Centre’s Sahyog Portal, even for sharing information related to human trafficking, child trafficking, drug-related crimes, and security matters to law enforcement agencies, could pose a “problem”.