On 20th September 2018, OpIndia.com received a frivolous defamation notice from Swara Bhaskar. The notice pertained to three articles that had been published by OpIndia.com in the due course of time.
The first article, headlined “Swara Bhaskar should be the last person to accuse anyone else of being a ‘rape apologist’”, was published on 18th April 2018. The article pertained to a Twitter spat between columnist Shefali Vaidya and Swara Bhaskar, where Swara Bhaskar herself had called Vaidya a “rape apologist”. It is interesting to note here, that according to Swara, what is good for the goose is certainly not good for the gander.
The second article headlined “Lack of comprehension skills or deliberate misquoting? Swara Bhaskar plays victim card”, was published on 31st January 2018. This article pertained to Twitter spat between Vivek Agnihotri and Swara Bhaskar where Swara, according to us, had gone on to misinterpret Agnihotri’s tweet and played victim. It is interesting to note that Swara herself has several times accused others of playing the victim. It is clear, that according to Swara, what is good for the goose is certainly not good for the gander.
The third article headlined “If Ramzan was a Hindu holy month – how the ‘liberal’ media and celebs would have reacted” was published on 10th June 2018. This was a satire piece written by one of our contributing authors. That Swara thinks a Satire piece is liable for a lawsuit, shows how rootedly she believes in freedom of expression.
The legal notice received by OpIndia.com can read here:
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Swara Bhaskar accused OpIndia.com of calling her a pseudo-feminist, rape apologist, that we alleged that her success was only owing to her mother’s success, that we alleged her ‘activism’ is related to her movie release (After the heinous Kathua rape and the placard fiasco right before the release of the movie ‘Veere di Wedding’), of ‘trivialising the liberal ideology’, attaching religion to rape, being anti-Hindu and myriad other charges. In fact, Swara Bhaskar has even held us responsible for several things we never said.
You can read our response to the legal notice here:
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In the notice, we were asked to tender an unqualified apology and take the three articles down. We at OpIndia.com have responded to Swara’s legal notice via our attornies. We have categorically rejected all charges, refused to take the articles down and certainly refused to apologise.
