The Delhi High Court on Tuesday requested a response from Twitter regarding a lawsuit filed by Abhijit Iyer Mitra that aims to have the ban on his Twitter account lifted, NDTV reports.
Delhi High Court Judge Mini Pushkarna granted Twitter time to file a response to the original plea, which was filed in July.
"Issue summons. Written submissions (should be filed) in 30 days," the Justice Mini Pushkarna told Indian media.
Iyer stated in his plea that Twitter had "unilaterally banned" his account, depriving the plaintiff of the opportunity to engage with his 151,000 followers. It should be noted, however, that the account has not been "banned" in the conventional sense of the word: the content is still available, meaning that Twitter simply suspended Mitra's access to it.
The plea also contains a request for the federal government to take action against the social network for the suspension of the account without following the procedure established by law.
According to Indian media, Mitra posted a tweet alleging that the son of a sitting Supreme Court judge had participated in a debate on NDTV, and the news channel's editor later posted bail for Zubair's release. The tweet also allegedly contained some personal information, although Iyer denies this.
"I had posted something and had disclosed no private information. I had merely disclosed who put surety for the bail of Mr Mohammed Zubair, given by the Supreme Court in July, and merely on the basis of this tweet, my access to my Twitter followers has been curtailed, without following the procedure laid down under the IT rules," he said.
The news comes after the microblogging site Twitter was acquired by the world's richest man, Elon Musk, whose main criticism of the platform was its policy of imposing permanent bans on individuals for "hate speech or the risk of inciting to violence."