A Delhi court today issued summons to various foreign-based social networking sites, including Facebook and Google, to face criminal charges for allegedly hosting objectionable contents and directed them to appear before it on March 13.

The court has asked the Ministry of External Affairs to get the summons served on these companies.

The court direction came after the counsel, appearing for Facebook India, said over ten out of 21 companies named as accused in the case were foreign-based and that the court would have to issue process to serve the summons on them.

The court was hearing a private complaint filed by a journalist against these firms for allegedly web-casting objectionable contents. The summons was issues to the sites including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Youtube.