Download a copy of the court order here: [pdf]
On October 8, 2026, the Delhi High Court dismissed a petition filed by a YouTube-based media company, Janta Live Press Network, seeking restoration of a disabled Gmail account. The court said that Google’s provision of email services is ‘a commercial activity undertaken by private entities’ and that no “public function” or duty exists, as argued by the petitioners.
“In the present case, Google is a private entity, and solely because it provides e-mail, hosting or other digital services, the same does not tantamount to mean that it can be construed as a ‘public function.’” – Justice Amit Mahajan
Some background of the case: According to the petitioners, on July 20, 2026, the Gmail account “was unauthorizedly accessed by third parties, following which the Gmail account was disabled by Google citing ‘unusual activity’.” In this context, the petitioners asked the court to issue a writ directing Google “to verify the petitioners’ original recovery credentials and restore full access to the petitioners’ Gmail account.”
The owner of the account then reportedly sent an e-mail to the Google Support Team from his personal e-mail account, narrating the sequence of events and seeking restoration. The petitioners said no response was received. He also lodged a formal complaint with the Cyber Police Station. The Gmail account remained disabled when the petitioners approached the court.
What did the Delhi HC say? The court said the grievance was “undisputedly serious”, but that “the question before this Court is not whether the grievance of the petitioners warrants redress but whether the relief sought can appropriately be granted in a writ petition.”
The court noted that a writ under Article 226 of the Constitution, which enables the courts to issue orders, “is maintainable against any person or entity, including private bodies, if they perform functions that can be construed as ‘public functions.’” It said the term has not been categorically defined, but “may be understood as functions that are similar to or closely related to those performable by the State in its sovereign capacity.”
The court said this may include circumstances “where the State outsources its function to a private entity or that the private entity itself performs a service so closely knit with the obligations of the State that it becomes a necessary function for the welfare of the society.”
When the petitioners argued that the Gmail account was integral to their media business, the court said this “stance, by itself, does not alter the nature of function performed by Google.”
“The provision of providing e-mail services is a commercial activity undertaken by private entities. Neither the provision of an email account nor its suspension or disabling on security grounds, without more, constitutes the performance of a public function or discharge of a public duty.” – Delhi HC
When the petitioners argued that Google is bound by the IT Rules, 2021, the court said this “does not, by itself, alter this conclusion”:
“The existence of certain obligations concerning grievance redressal and intermediary compliance does not automatically convert disputes arising from account restriction, security incident or alleged failure of customer support into a public function amenable to writ jurisdiction.” – Delhi HC
The court also noted that Google does not have a monopoly over email services: The court said: “e-mail services are offered by various independent providers, and the same is also not monopolised by Google.” It added:
“The importance of a particular account to its user, or its widespread use, does not translate to mean that the same constitutes ‘public function’. The decisive consideration thus is the nature of the function and not merely the size or reach of the entity concerned.”
Why it matters: This case could be seen not from the sole lens of Google and Gmail as essential services, but as the very minimal, cumbersome or time-consuming grievance redressal mechanism offered by the intermediaries when their accounts or content are blocked for legitimate reasons, arbitrarily or by mistake. At a MediaNama discussion, various content creators have spoken about the minimal/no recourse after arbitrary censorship at the content or account level. Read more about it here. Recently, they discussed the same issue at an event organised by SFLC. Read MediaNama’s coverage of this here.
The petitioners said they wrote to Google Support and got no response. The court called the grievance “undisputedly serious” but said the question was whether a writ could be granted, and held it could not. The order leaves the petitioners “at liberty to take recourse to appropriate legal remedies”. This will leave the petitioners to pursue other legal remedies, which could be the usual grievance redressal route, which may or may not offer the necessary solutions in the required time.
Essentially, this is a dependency problem. For instance, in another case in July 2025, Microsoft suspended IT services, including access to its own data, to Nayara Energy, India’s second-largest private oil refinery, citing the EU’s 18th sanctions against Russia. Nayara had to move the Delhi High Court, and Microsoft restored services just before the hearing on July 30. Even then, the alternatives Nayara used in the interim could not restore the data and emails stored on Microsoft’s servers.
Commenting on this incident, MediaNama’s Editor Nikhil Pahwa said the incident “should be a warning sign for India. This constitutes a sovereignty risk.” He also recalled the US’s Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), which he said “enables the US government to access data stored with cloud services and data centers run by US companies anywhere”, and suggested that India “needs to de-risk its government operations by switching to open source services.”
Concerning such dependence and the impact on free speech, in September 2020, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya told the Lok Sabha that the Intermediary Guidelines “empower private foreign enterprises performing essentially a public function to act as censors of free speech without Government oversight.” In his address, he also called for the repeal of safe harbor protections.
The question of whether a private platform performs a ‘public function’ has been raised in courts before. A 2021 analysis of the WhatsApp privacy case by Abhijeet Shrivastava and Anujay Shrivastava argued that Indian courts had not held a private entity, like WhatsApp, to be performing a public function merely because its activities are important or widely used.
“In fact, to this day, there has never been any instance in India where a private entity was held to discharge a public function merely because its activities are ‘fundamental’, important, or ‘public’.” – Constitutional Law Society at Odisha Law Unveristy.
What does this mean for Indian businesses that depend on US-based internet platforms? As Indian businesses and services become increasingly dependent on foreign technology, as they already are, what leverage do Indian users really have at the time of adversity or arbitrary blocking of services, when the formal recourse offered isn’t sufficient or working?
Also Read:
- Microsoft-Nayara Incident Shows Why India Shouldn’t Rely on Foreign Technologies
- BJP’s Tejasvi Surya urges govt to repeal intermediary liability protections
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