The Delhi High Court on Friday told historians Audrey Truschke, Ananya Chakravarti and Rohit Chopra not to publish any defamatory post or comment, alleging plagiarism against historian Vikram Sampath, in relation to his works on Veer Savarkar.
The single-judge Bench of Justice Amit Bansal passed the interim order on a petition filed by Sampath against the three historians and others over a letter sent to the Royal Historical Society, raising allegations of plagiarism against him with respect to a journal publication and his two-volume biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and some alleged defamatory tweets.
The Bench noted that the continued publication of the letter has caused considerable damage to Sampath’s reputation and career.
The Court ordered that till the next date of hearing, the defendants were restrained from publishing the letter or any other defamatory material on Twitter as well as any other online or offline platforms.
It also issued summons to the defendants on the plea by Sampath and posted the case for hearing on April 1.
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Justice Bansal also noted Twitter’s argument that if Sampath provides URLs of tweets containing a letter written by the defendants to President of Royal Historical Society (RHS) Emma Griffin accusing Sampath of plagiarism, the same will be taken down by the social media platform.
The Senior Counsel for Twitter has said that if urls are provided, the same will be taken down by them, the Bench added.
Sampath had approached the Delhi High Court, seeking Rs 2 crore compensation from Truschke and two others for damaging his reputation.
The plea also has tech journalist Abhishek Baxi, Professor Ashok Swain, Twitter and the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as defendants.
Baxi and Swain had tweeted the same letter from their handles.
Case name: Dr. Vikram Sampath vs Dr. Audrey Truschke and Ors