The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed news portal ‘The Wire’ to take down an alleged defamatory article and the offending tweets casting aspersions on Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar in relation to the Bamnoli land acquisition matter. In an interim order, the high court granted ad-interim injunction in favour of the chief secretary and also directed the news portal and its reporter to not post, circulate or publish any similar defamatory content against the plaintiff as set out in the article.
The court said in case the portal and its reporter fail to comply with the directions within 48 hours of the pronouncement of this order, micro-blogging platform X shall take down the tweets/posts and Google shall remove and de-index the web link of the article.
“Undoubtedly, while freedom of speech and expression is sacrosanct, the reputation of a person earned over
several decades, cannot be sacrificed at the altar of such freedom, when the impugned publication, ex-facie, contains unsubstantiated allegations and defamatory imputations, regardless of the truth.
“In the present case, the court has also taken note of the crescendo of politically motivated tweets/ posts/ comments, virtually in sync with
the publication of the aforesaid article/ publication dated November 9, which further validate the necessity of urgent injunctive order,” Justice Sachin Datta said.