Ankit Bhardwaj, a BJP youth wing member has decided to file a civil defamation case against AAP leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh for sharing his pictures online and claiming that he was the person who had slapped rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra on 10th May, thus claiming that BJP acted to bring bad name to AAP.
In reality, another person named Ankit Bhardwaj had walked over to Kapil Mishra while the latter was on a hunger strike and started hitting him before Mishra’s supporters caught hold of him. The attacker was also shouting threats like, “Kapil Mishra has betrayed the party. He doesn’t deserve to live”.
He was initially identified as an AAP volunteer in media reports, but the AAP leadership soon started circulating ‘evidence’ that claimed that Ankit Bhardwaj was actually a BJP worker out there to defame the party.
This was tweeted by AAP’s Social Media head Ankit Lal, and Kejriwal too re-tweeted a similar claim:
Even AAP’s official page decided to peddle this version using Sanjay Singh’s ‘expose’:
This whole orchestra of the AAP though soon fell apart however.
The attacker Ankit Bhardwaj who had assaulted Mishra was soon taken into police custody. While he was in custody, the Ankit Bhardwaj associated with the BJP came in front of the media and blasted AAP for defaming him. Media reports claimed that both the attacker Ankit Bhardwaj and his father had confessed to the police that he had been working for AAP since the last 2 years.
The BJP’s Ankit Bhardwaj wasn’t taking things lightly and sent a legal notice on 12th May to Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh asking them to apologize and state the truth on social media plus in a press conference within two days.
Kejriwal and co were in no mood to comply and this initially prompted Ankit to file a criminal defamation case on 26th May. He has now followed it up with a civil defamation suit worth only Re 1, which he filed at a Delhi court.
Ankit had reportedly assessed the total damages incurred by him to be Rs 1 crore but he reportedly had no knowledge of either Kejriwal or Sanjay Singh having any valuable assets, hence he decided to limit his claim to only a symbolic Re 1.
Kejriwal is already reeling under a criminal defamation suit worth Rs 10 crores which was filed by BJP leader Arun Jaitley. Kejriwal then had hired noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani to fight his case but the latter’s defense ended up heaping another defamation case on him.
