A Delhi court on Friday issued notices to US companies Facebook, Google, Yahoo and other internet firms to remove material considered religiously offensive. The Delhi court cases were brought by individuals, one by a journalist and the other by an Islamic scholar who runs a website called fatwaonline.org that gives answers to moral questions.

The court also issued summons to 19 companies to stand trial for offences relating to distributing obscene material to minors, after being shown images it said were offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. "The accused in connivance with each other and other unknown persons are selling, publicly exhibiting and have put into circulation obscene, lascivious content, Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar said on Friday.

India has generally unrestricted access to the Internet for those of its 1.2 billion people who can afford it and are on the electrical and telephone grids. So far only about a tenth of the population uses the Web, but with the number of connections growing fast in the religiously conservative society, concerns about the nature of web content are growing in some quarters, including senior government officials.