In yet another legal victory to historian Vikram Sampath, the Delhi High Court directed micro-blogging site Twitter to remove five more tweets posted by his peer Audrey Truschke, which had alleged that parts of the two-volume biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar were plagiarised. Justice Amit Bansal said that the tweets in question were defamatory in nature and that there was a link posted in the said tweets to the letters, the publication of which was injuncted by the Delhi High Court in orders dated 18 and 24 February.
The Delhi High Court was dealing with an application filed on behalf of Sampath under Order XXXIX Rule 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, which has sought from the judiciary a direction for taking down of further defamatory tweets posted by Truschke on Twitter.
On the said days in February this year, the Delhi High Court had ordered taking down of some tweets of Truschke directed against Sampath.
Sampath had filed the lawsuit against Truschke and others for a letter that they had sent to the Royal Historical Society, accusing the Savarkar biographer of plagiarism from a older literary works.
The lawsuit stated that historian Truschke, Ananya Chakravarti and Rohit Chopra had written the letter on 11 February to the Royal Historical Society in London, raising the serious allegation of plagiarism.
Despite ad interim injunction passed by this court vide orders 18th February, 2022 and 24th February, 2022, the defendant no.1 continues to post defamatory material against the plaintiff on the platform of the defendant no. 4/Twitter.
Delhi High Court
The court noted further that Truschke had failed to appear before it and the bench was of the view that Sampath could successfully make a prima facie case.
In view of the fact that the defendant no.1 has not submitted to the jurisdiction of this Court and is not appearing in these proceedings, the defendant no.4/Twitter is directed to take down the following tweets as mentioned in prayer ‘a’ of the present application.
Delhi High Court
The matter will be heard again on 28 July.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court had restrained Truschke and other persons named above from publishing any defamatory material against Sampath on Twitter or other online or offline platforms.
The court had also restrained the defendants from publishing the letter dated 11 February, addressed to the Royal Historical Society in London raising the serious allegation of plagiarism against Sampath.
The lawsuit sought decree of permanent injunction against the aforementioned defendants to cease the publication of Letter or any other defamatory material. It also sought damage of Rs 2 crore from the said defendants.
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