This order decides only whether the writ petition is maintainable. It does not decide whether Google acted correctly in disabling the account, whether the petitioners have any contractual or statutory claim against Google, or the merits of the petitioners' complaint to the Cyber Police Station.
- Case
- Janta Live Press Network Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. v. Google LLC & Anr.
- Court
- High Court of Delhi
- Decision
- Citation
- 2026:DHC:8978
- Bench
- Amit Mahajan
- Judgment by
- Amit Mahajan
- Case numbers
- W.P.(C) 14915/2026
- Outcome
- Order dated 08-10-2026 dismissing W.P.(C) 14915/2026 as not maintainable under Article 226 of the Constitution. The underlying grievance — unauthorised access to, and disabling of, the petitioners' Gmail account — remains unadjudicated on the merits, and the petitioners are at liberty to pursue other legal remedies.
Writ dismissed as not maintainable: email services are not a public function
On 8 October 2026, Justice Amit Mahajan of the Delhi High Court dismissed a writ petition by Janta Live Press Network Pvt. Ltd. and its director seeking restoration of their Gmail account, holding that the petition was not maintainable under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The Court held that Google, a private entity, was not discharging a public function by providing email services, and that neither the importance of the account to the petitioners' business nor the widespread use of Gmail could convert a commercial service into a public function. The petitioners remain free to pursue other legal remedies.
A media company's Gmail account, disabled after unauthorised access
The first petitioner is a private limited company that runs a media business under the name 'Janta Live News', including a YouTube news channel, and the second petitioner is its director. According to the petition, the company's Gmail account was accessed without authorisation by third parties on 20 July 2026, following which Google disabled the account citing 'unusual activity'.
The director emailed the Google Support Team from his personal email account narrating the sequence of events and seeking restoration, but received no response. The petitioners also lodged a formal complaint with the Cyber Police Station, but the account was still not restored.
They then approached the High Court, asking for a writ directing Google to verify their original recovery credentials and restore full access to the account.
The question was maintainability, not whether the grievance deserved redress
The Court noted that the petitioners' grievance was undisputedly serious, but said the question before it was not whether the grievance warranted redress — it was whether the relief sought could appropriately be granted in a writ petition.
The petitioners argued that the writ was maintainable even though Google is not a public entity, because it discharges a public function, relying on the Delhi High Court's decision in XYZ v. Union of India and connected matters (2026:DHC:8440). They also contended that Google is bound by the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and that this made the petition maintainable.
The public-function test: the nature of the function, not the size of the entity
The Court set out the test from a line of Supreme Court authority: a writ under Article 226 is maintainable against any person or entity, including private bodies, if they perform functions that can be construed as public functions.
The term has not been categorically defined, but a public function may be understood as one similar to, or closely related to, functions performable by the State in its sovereign capacity. It can include circumstances where the State outsources its function to a private entity, or where the private entity performs a service so closely knit with the obligations of the State that it becomes a necessary function for the welfare of society. The Court cited G. Bassi Reddy v. International Crops Research Institute ((2003) 4 SCC 225) for this proposition.
Why email is a commercial activity, and why XYZ did not help the petitioners
Applying that test, the Court held that providing email, hosting or other digital services does not amount to a public function. The provision of email 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 the discharge of a public duty.
Email services are offered by various independent providers and are not monopolised by Google. The importance of a particular account to its user, or its widespread use, does not translate into a public function: the decisive consideration is the nature of the function, not merely the size or reach of the entity concerned.
The Court also distinguished XYZ v. Union of India. That case concerned informational privacy — the continued availability and name-based searchability of judicial records bearing the petitioners' names, causing disproportionate and continuing harm to their reputation — and the petitioners there sought de-indexing of those records and masking of personal identifiers. The present petitioners, by contrast, merely sought restoration of an email account.
Finally, the Court held that the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the 2021 Rules do not, by themselves, alter the conclusion: obligations concerning grievance redressal and intermediary compliance do not automatically convert disputes arising from account restriction, a security incident or alleged failure of customer support into a public function amenable to writ jurisdiction.
What the order does not decide
The Court concluded that, despite the widespread use of Gmail, no public function in the strict legal sense intended to invoke Article 226 had been demonstrated. It expressly left the petitioners at liberty to take recourse to appropriate legal remedies in accordance with law, and dismissed the petition as not maintainable.
Nothing in the order decides whether Google was right to disable the account, whether the petitioners have a claim in contract or under statute, or how their complaint to the Cyber Police Station should be resolved.
BANTHRY ANALYSISFor law students: maintainability is decided before merits
This order is a clean illustration of the threshold question in writ practice. A sympathetic grievance does not answer maintainability: the Court first asks whether the respondent is amenable to writ jurisdiction at all, and only then — if the answer is yes — reaches the merits. The public-function test turns on the nature of the function, not on how important the service is to the petitioner or how large the provider is.
Compare the two uses of the same doctrine in this order: in XYZ, the function in issue was control over the continued public availability of judicial records bearing a person's name, which the Court treated as engaging informational privacy; here, the function was restoring a single email account after a security incident, which the Court treated as ordinary customer support for a commercial service.
The practical lesson is to plead maintainability as a distinct step — identify the public function, the statutory source of the duty, and the authority that treats the function as public — rather than assuming that a widely used private service is automatically a State-like actor.
READING PROMPTSQuestions for a closer reading
- What test does the Court apply to decide whether a writ under Article 226 lies against a private entity, and which Supreme Court decision does it rely on?
- Why did the Court hold that providing email services is not a public function, even though Gmail is widely used and the account was central to the petitioners' media business?
- How did the Court distinguish the petitioners' reliance on XYZ v. Union of India, and what does that distinction turn on?
