After filing countless cases against Republic TV and Arnab Goswami, now Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh has filed a case against former bureaucrat RV Subramani and online news portal Goa Chronicle for articles on him.
The IPS officer has filed a criminal defamation case against them at the Bombay High Court, after RV Subramani had explosive allegations in an interview with Goa Chronicle, where he had said that Dawood Ibrahim is behind the attack on Republic TV and that Arnab Goswami may face a threat to his life.
The petition, filed through law firm Crawford Bayley and Co, names R V Subramani, Goa Chronicle editor Savio Rodrigues, his wife Myrtle Rodrigues, Kaydence Media Ventures and Twitter as defendants in the case seeking to restrict publication and distribution of articles and news reports on him.
The Petition alleges that the ‘allegations and insinuations’ published Goa Chronicle against Param Bir Singh are false and defamatory, and has sought relief from the same. It says that in March 2020, RV Subramani made ‘false and defamatory’ statement about Param Bir Singh when he had said that Singh’s appointment as Mumbai Police Commissioner was made on the behest of a corporate house. After that, Param Bir Singh in his official capacity as Mumbai Police Commissioner sought the permission of Maharashtra government to initiate legal action against the former under-secretary at the union ministry of home affairs. In September this year, the state government granted him the permission to file case against Subramani for his comments against Param Bir Singh.
After that, on 19th August, Goa Chronicle published an article titled “Former MHA civil servant alleges Rs 500 crore was set aside by a corporate house for appointment of Mumbai Police Commissioner”, based on an interview with Subramani, which contained the comments made by the former bureaucrat.
In the interview, Subramani had accused that that a particular corporate group had set aside Rs 500 crore for appointment of Mumbai Police commissioner, and Param Bir Singh was appointed to the post immediately after the Shiv Sena led govt came to power. “The present Police Commissioner’s wife was a Director in the corporate house”, Subramani had said in the interview. He had also accused that Param Bir Singh had led the torture on Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Col Purohit and others.
Other than filing criminal defamation charges, the petition by Param Bir Singh also seeks restraining order from the court restricting Subramani and Goa Chronicle from publishing any article, interview or content containing the allegations made by Subramani. It also seeks a direction to Twitter to remove the tweet by Savio Rodrigues sharing the link to the article, including all retweets of the same.
In addition to that, Param Bir Singh has also sought accounts of all income earned by RV Subramani in connection with his comments on the Mumbai Police Commissioner from 5 March 2020. The plea further seeks the accounts of all income earned by Goa Chronicle from the interview with Subramani from 19th August 2020, including revenue from readers and advertisement. The plea says that such amount should be paid to the Mumbai Police Welfare Fund, along with 12% interest.
Goa Chronicle editor Savio Rodrigues has issued a statement responding to the lawsuit filed by the police commissioner. He said that persons and entities associated with Goa Chronicle has been dragged into a defamation suit for publishing an interview with former MHA diplomat RV Subramani. He said that their legal team will look into the affairs of the defamation suit. “GC will continue to seek the truth in India and globally and expose it for the better of India and the world”, he added.