The Delhi High Court on Tuesday (February 25, 2025) refused to grant an early hearing on a plea for blocking access to DeepSeek, an AI chatbot developed by Chinese entities, in all forms in India.
A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said there was no urgency in the PIL and it did not deserve a priority hearing.
After the petitioner’s counsel said it was a sensitive matter, the court asked him not to use the platform if it was so harmful.
“These kinds of platforms have been available in India for a long time. Not only DeepSeek but there are several such platforms available. Don’t use it if it’s so harmful. There is no ground for early hearing,” the bench said.
The court further held, “No case for an early hearing is made out. The application is rejected”.
Many things were available on the Internet for the entire world to access, but a person was not required to use everything, the court added.
The petitioner’s counsel sought the hearing be brought from April 16 to a prior date and said the matter couldn’t be heard due to paucity of time on the last occasion.
The court previously granted time to the Centre’s counsel to get instructions in the matter.
Petitioner Bhavna Sharma, a lawyer, said the plea sought to protect the personal data of citizens and the data in government systems and devices from cyber attacks and data breaches, and uphold its confidentiality.
The plea said within a month of the launch of DeepSeek application on play stores, various vulnerabilities were discovered in it, causing a large-scale leak of sensitive personal data online, including chat history, back-end data and log streams. PTI