Kerala High Court Orders Meta to Restore Journalist's Facebook Account

The Kerala High Court has directed Meta Platforms to provisionally reinstate the Facebook account of veteran journalist N. Madhavan Kutty. The court determined that the Kerala Police overstepped their authority by blocking the journalist's entire account due to objections over a single post.

According to the court's order dated July 31, authorities had blocked Kutty's full account, even though the police's concerns were limited to specific content. The court concluded that this action likely exceeded their legal powers. As an interim measure, the court allowed Kutty to access his account, provided he removed the flagged content. The court instructed a designated officer to provide Meta's grievance officer with the exact URLs of the objectionable posts, ensuring Meta would take down only those specific items while keeping the account active.

The dispute originated on November 11, 2025, when Kutty, a former editor of The New Indian Express, posted a clipping from a Malayalam newspaper about the Delhi blasts on Facebook. In his accompanying comment, he suggested that efforts to polarize Hindu-Muslim voting ahead of the first phase of the Bihar elections had failed and raised the possibility of vested interests playing a role.

Meta raised concerns about data retention policies. The company's lawyers stated that as the account had been suspended for over six months, the data might no longer be recoverable due to the six-month retention limit under the IT Rules, 2021. Kutty's counsel countered that the account remained visible outside India, indicating the data was still intact and retrievable.

Digital rights groups argue that this case reflects a broader trend of account and content blocks in India. The Internet Freedom Foundation continues to document instances where Meta platforms have withheld posts and accounts, including satire and criticism of the government.