Delhi High Court Directs Govt To Block Nicelocal.in In Data Theft Case Filed By Just Dial

The website www.nicelocal.in (operated by Local Search Solutions Pvt. Ltd.) has been blocked on account of data and source code theft in a suit filed by Just Dial Limited

Justice Prathiba M. Singh, of the Delhi High Court has directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) & the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), to block the website nicelocal.in & suspend all its services. There is also a restraining order against the domain name registrant, not to transfer the domain name.  

The High Court while granting an ad interim relief restrained the website nicelocal.in from advertising any goods or services & has further directed for the preservation of data, including a declaration of the payment received so far from any customers by way of an affidavit. Additionally, the Hon. High Court has sought a status report from the Noida police in the FIR registered against nicelocal.in & its directors.    

It appears that nicelocal.in has two shareholders, one based in Cyprus & the other based in Russia. It also has a director who is based in Delhi. Nicelocal.in had been running a rogue website by scrapping data from Just Dial’s database. It was also collecting payments including auto-debit without issuing invoices. There may have been a large number of innocent persons who may have been duped by nicelocal.in. Hence, the restraining orders till the next date.