Delhi HC directs TMC's Saket Gokhale to pay ₹50 lakh as damages in defamation case
Trinamool Congress
The Delhi high court on Monday directed Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Saket Gokhale to pay ₹50 lakh as damages in a 2021 defamation case filed by former diplomat Lakshmi Puri over the alleged defamatory tweets.
A bench of Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, who passed the order, directed Gokhale to issue an apology to the former diplomat in The Times of India within a month. The court also ordered him to apologise to Puri on the X (formerly known as Twitter) handle from which he had posted the alleged tweets. According to the high court, the apology post on Gokhale's X account must remain for six months.
In June 2021, Gokhale posted tweets referring to a certain property purchased by the former diplomat Lakshmi Puri in Switzerland. He also made several posts on the social media platform alleging the sources of income of the diplomat and her husband, union minister Hardeep Singh Puri.
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Shortly after the posts were made, Puri filed a defamation case against the TMC leader, seeking ₹5 crore in damages. She had also sought direction from the court to take down or delete the tweets wherein “false and factually incorrect, per-se defamatory, slanderous and libellous statements or imputations have been made by the TMC leader” against her and her family.
Following this, the Delhi high court, on July 13, directed Gokhale to remove all the posts allegedly defaming Puri within 24 hours and restrained him from posting any defamatory content against the diplomats.
However, the high court had preserved his right to seek a modification to the order. Reportedly, the bench noted that while any citizen has the right to comment on a public servant's sources of income, the law of the land requires the concerned citizen to first seek clarification from the individual or approach the authorities regarding the matter before publishing their allegations.
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