The Delhi High Court on Tuesday directed activist Saket Gokhale to delete tweets alleging that former diplomat Lakshmi Puri, wife of Union Minister Hardeep Puri, had purchased a house in Switzerland disproportionate to her income.
The court said in its order, “The defendant is directed to immediately delete, from his
Twitter account, all Tweets against the plaintiff, to which the present plaint makes reference, as well as all connected Tweets which may form part of the trail of Tweets by the defendant against the plaintiff.”
Justice C Hari Shankar of the Delhi High Court also restrained Gokhale from ‘posting any defamatory or scandalous or factually incorrect Tweet, on his Twitter account, against the plaintiff or her husband.’
While Puri was being represented by law firm Karanjawala & Co., Sarim Naved was representing Gokhale.
The high court said that ‘in the event of the defendant failing to comply with direction (i) supra within 24 hours of the pronouncement of this
order, Twitter, Inc. is directed to take down the tweets figuring on the following URLs, as well as all tweets which may figure in the trail thereof.’
Gokhale, meanwhile, tweeted, “You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.”
– Maya Angelou.”
Saket Gokhale, in his tweets, had raised questions on the purchase of expensive property in Switzerland by Lakshmi Puri alleging that this was disproportionate to her income. He had also made references to her husband, a former diplomat and currently a union minister.
Puri, who was then posted as the Assistant Secretary-General at the United States, in her suit had claimed that Gokhale’s tweets were ‘maliciously motivated and designed accordingly, laced with canards and entail deliberate twisting of facts.’