Delhi High Court to hear Google-Facebook's petition today

The Delhi High Court will on Monday hear the petition filed by Google and Facebook, challenging the summons issued to them by a lower court.

A Delhi court on Friday had issued summons to various foreign-based social networking sites, including Facebook and Google, to face criminal charges for allegedly hosting objectionable contents and directed them to appear before it on March 13.

It asked the Ministry of External Affairs to get the summons served on these companies.

The court direction came after the counsel appearing for Facebook India said over ten out of 21 companies named as accused in the case were foreign-based and that the court would have to issue process to serve the summons on them.

The court was hearing a private complaint filed by a journalist Vinay Rai against these firms for allegedly web-casting objectionable contents. The summons were issues to the sites including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and YouTube.