Issuing orders on a private complaint, a Delhi court today told 21 social networking site hosts, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and YouTube, to remove all "anti-religious" or "anti-social" content and file compliance report by 6 February 2012.

Additional civil magistrate Sudesh Kumar also directed the union government to take "immediate appropriate steps" and file a report on these in the court by 13 January.

The magistrate noted that material submitted by the complainant from these websites contained obscene pictures and derogatory articles pertaining to Prophet Mohammad, Jesus Christ and various Hindu gods and goddesses.

Representatives of two of the websites, Yahoo India and Microsoft, appeared in court and submitted that they have not got the copies of the court order or the complaint against them.

On 20 December, the court had issued summons to at least 21 social networking sites, including US giants Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and YouTube, asking them to appear before the court today over webcasting of allegedly objectionable content.

Judge Kumar accepted a criminal complaint by former spokesperson of the Darul Ul Uloom at Deoband and founder of FatwaOnline.org, Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, and directed the government to take "immediate appropriate steps" in this regard.

Qasmi told a newspaper later that he is meeting minister for communications and information technology Kapil Sibal on Thursday to discuss the issue.

The court said, "it appears from a bare perusal of the documents that prima facie the accused in connivance with each other and other unknown persons are selling, publicly exhibiting and have put into circulation obscene, lascivious content which also appeals to the prurient interests and tends to deprave and corrupt the persons who are likely to read, see or hear the same.

"It is also evident that such contents are continuously openly and freely available to everyone who is using the said network irrespective of their age and even the persons under the age of 18 years have full and uncensored access to such obscene contents."

The web companies may face trial for offences under section 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

Google India has been made a party in the suit under four different heads, as it owns YouTube, Orkut, Blogspot, and GooglePlus.

Besides, India heads of companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and discussion forums such as Topix, Exbii, Boardreader have been made a party by the plaintiff. ZombieTime, which carried a large archive caricatures and images of some religious figures, has also been summoned.

"It's a civil suit we have filed for which a stay order was issued this week. The judge has issued the stay order under and issued summons under the order 39 rule 1 and 2 of the Criminal Procedure Code," said Santosh Pandey, advocate for Qasmi.

The court's order comes three days after another Delhi court hearing a petition had asked various social networking companies including Facebook, Google and YouTube to remove content promoting hatred or communal disharmony from their respective websites.

The case comes at a time when the government has been trying to browbeat these sites into self-monitoring their content and removing objectionable material.

Information minister Sibal has been for some time asking social networking giants like Google and Facebook to ensure offensive material is deleted. Talks between the government and the internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo failed earlier this month, as they declined to pre-screen or remove content which is legal but controversial.

Facing a storm of criticism for what was perceived as censorship through the back door, Sibal denied that he wanted to muzzle the social media. "I suggested that these platforms should evolve a mechanism on their own to ensure that such contents are removed as soon as they get to know of it ... I have told them that this cannot go on," Sibal had said.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton came out in support of the internet companies, this month saying that regulations on the internet would be disastrous for everybody and stifle conversations and businesses.