SC stays HC directions against OLX in a case of impersonation, cheating

The Supreme Court has stayed a direction by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to OLX India to adopt a screening mechanism in connection with sellers, who could post an advertisement on the online platform.

A bench of Justices U U Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat, and Bela M Trivedi suspended operation of the High Court's order, after hearing senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for OLX India B V in the top court.

The counsel questioned the High Court's order passed in December last year.

The High Court had passed a slew of directions to OLX, in a case where a person had used another person’s identity to post an advertisement on the online platform.

The plea, against the high court order, contended that OLX is an online marketplace, which connects sellers with potential buyers and is nothing more than a passive conduit between a buyer and a seller similar to the classified’s column in a newspaper. The plea added that the platform qualifies as an "intermediary" as defined under Section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act 2000.

The matter before the High Court was that a police officer had gone to the petitioner’s house and handed him a notice that a person identified as Umar Ali, had used the petitioner's Aadhaar card to post an advertisement for the sale of a motorcycle. The petitioner was informed that the impersonator had cheated a person in connection with the sale of the motorcycle, and an FIR has been registered against the petitioner.

The petitioner then moved the High Court urging it to issue directions for conducting a fair and impartial investigation in the FIR.

“Since this court is dealing with such or similar type of cases every day, wherein by using OLX platform, the accused persons are cheating the innocent people, it would be necessary to issue notice to the Home Secretary, Government of Haryana as well as Director-General of Police, Haryana to inform this court whether any guidelines have been issued with regard to giving an advertisement on a platform like OLX or any other similar agency," the High Court said in its order.

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