Luthra & Luthra’s Delhi office won in the Supreme Court today for Indian B2C portal Ebay and its managing director Avnish Bajaj, in the case of eBay v State and Avnish Bajaj v State.

Luthra’s litigation practice co-founding partner Vijay Sondhi and partner Sanjay Kumar, with managing associate Saleem Hassan Ansari, principal associates Varun Pareek and Anirban Bhattacharya, and associate Wasim Beg acted for Ebay and Bajaj.

Bajaj’s website Bazee.com India Private Limited (BIPL), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of EBay, had carried a listing offering a mobile phone video clip of two Delhi Public School students filmed in sexually explicit acts for sale in 2004.

They had appealed against a May 2008 judgment of the Delhi High Court, which was delivered by Justice Muralidhar, and had declined to halt the trial court proceedings against Bajaj under section 67 of the Information Technology Act 2000 (IT Act) for the offence of publishing an obscene product and making it available for sale.

BIPL was not arraigned as an accused and the high court held that the law recognises deemed criminal liability of the directors of a company irrespective of the company being joined in as defendant.

Ebay, in its appeal before the Supreme Court, challenged the high court’s reasoning behind Bajaj’s prosecution that a company’s directors can be independently deemed criminally liable under the IT Act, even when the company itself is not arraigned.

A bench consisting of justices Dalveer Bhandari, Dipak Misra and Sudhansu Mukhopadhyay set aside the prosecution of Bajaj, according to a statement from Luthra & Luthra.

Counsel Muneesh Malhotra acted for appellants Aneeta and Anil Hada, senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi acted for Bajaj, senior counsel Sidharth Luthra appeared for eBay.

The respondents had instructed counsel Rajesh Harnal in the appeal by the Hadas while additional solicitor general PP Malhotra appeared for the state. Arun Mohan was amicus curiae.

The order was not yet available at the time of going to press.

• Update 28 April, 18:33: Click here to download the Supreme Court order

[Correction: An earlier version of the article had incorrectly described the high court’s order. This has been corrected. We regret the error.]