The Delhi High Court on Monday passed a restraining order against a person named Anurag Srivastava, “from directly or indirectly publishing, re-publishing, sharing posts on the social media platforms or through any other medium, posts or statements that are defamatory” in its content against the TV Today Network, its top management, news anchors or other top office-bearers.
The order passed by the Delhi High Court also directed Twitter to suspend/block the Twitter handles of Anurag Srivastava and ordered Google to remove the contentious statements made by Anurag in the Google search results.
The lawsuit against defendant Anurag Srivastava was filed by India Today Group, alleging that the social media user made fake and malicious statements against the media outlet regarding allegations of the group charging money for interview.
India Today filed a lawsuit against Anurag Srivastava for alleging they charged Rs 8 crore from Rhea Chakraborty
The official Twitter account of India Today had last month taken to Twitter to inform that they had lodged a formal complaint against social media user Anurag Srivastava and would soon also initiate legal action against him. Entrepreneur Anurag Srivastava had last month alleged that actor Rhea Chakraborty had paid Rs 8 crore to journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and India Today for her interview in connection with the Sushant Singh Rajput death case.
The India Today group has lodged a formal complaint with Twitter and will also initiate legal action against Anurag Srivastava.#FakeNewsAlert pic.twitter.com/90xziLj2IY
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) September 8, 2020
The group had contended in its suit that Anurag had accused the organisation and one of its anchors of charging Rs 8 crores to interview Rhea Chakraborty. Their petition also claimed that the social media user had made obnoxious remarks attributed to a nurse at the time of the birth of the news anchor and accused the journalist of fabricating fake news. The said anchor, presumably Rajdeep Sardesai, was also compared to a person facing extradition proceedings by the said user.
The advocate representing India Today Network told the court that the three tweets were taken down by the organisation but the search results on Google still showed up the controversial tweets. The Bench of Justice Mukta Gupta directed Twitter to block/suspend the account.
