Supreme Court adjourns WhatsApp-Meta privacy policy case to Feb. 23

The Supreme Court on Monday (February 9, 2026) adjourned the WhatsApp-Meta privacy policy case to February 23, 2026. The case was listed on Monday (February 9) before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant.

During an oral mentioning before the Bench, a counsel stated that senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who is representing the online platform, is unwell and requested the bench to postpone the case.

The Supreme Court is hearing appeals from tech giants Meta Platforms and WhatsApp against a CCI order imposing a penalty of ₹213.14 crore on them over their privacy policy.

On February 3, 2026, the Supreme Court said it will not permit instant messaging platform WhatsApp and its parent company, Meta, to breach the right to privacy of millions of their “silent consumers” in India through the sharing and commercial exploitation of personal data.

At one point during the hearing, a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, addressing Meta and WhatsApp, compared the sharing of private data to a “decent way of committing theft”, saying by now “you must have taken away millions of bytes of data”.

WhatsApp and Meta, led by senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Amit Sibal, vehemently objected to the court’s observations, maintaining that users could ‘opt-out’ from having their data shared. They said prior consent was cardinal. WhatsApp stressed that messages sent and received on its platform were end-to-end encrypted.