Saket Gokhale left red-faced! Delhi HC requests him to remove tweets against Lakshmi Puri

New Delhi, July 13: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday directed activist Saket Gokhale to delete all tweets against former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Lakshmi Puri. The HC further said that if Gokhale does not delete the tweets, then Twitter is directed to take down those URLs.

 

 

In a series of tweetd on June 23, 2021, the so-called RTI activist and a vocal Congress supporter Saket Gokhale had made serious allegations against Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Former IFS officer Lakshmi Puri. He had claimed that their income and property did not come from legitimate sources.

 

 

Without knowing the whole scenario, Gokhale had stated that Lakshmi's annual income at 10-12 lakh and took a jibe that Puris could not have afforded the house at civil servant's salary. As usual, he had missed some parts. Lakshmi was also an International Civil servant from 2002 to 2018 drawing a tax free UN salary of over US$ 200,000 annually when she bought the house at Geneva.

 

 

 

Responding such baseless allegations, Lakshmi sent a legal notice to Saket for defaming her and her husband online. Now, the Court has said that Saket is directed to immediately delete, from his Twitter account, all Tweets against Puri. It also restrained Gokhale, pending further orders of this Court, from posting any defamatory or scandalous or factually incorrect Tweet, on his Twitter account, against the Puri or her husband.

 

 

 

 

The Court also clarified that if Gokhale failed to comply with direction then within 24 hours of the pronouncement of this order, Twitter, is directed to take down the tweets figuring from its URLs, as well as all tweets which may figure in the trail thereof.

 

 

 

"In the age of social media, desecration of the reputation of a public figure has become child's play. All that is needed is the opening of a social media account and, thereafter, the posting of messages on the account. Thousands of responses are received and, in the process, the reputation of the man, who is targeted, becomes mud," the Court said.

 

 

Gokhale, in one of his tweets had referred to "swiss bank accounts" and "foreign black money" and tagged the Union Finance Minister to order a money-laundering enquiry by the Enforcement Directorate on her and her husband.

 

Puri has sought a decree of mandatory injunction directing Gokale to immediately take down the tweets. She also sought a decree of damages of Rs 5,00,00,000 in her favour and against Defendant and further direct that the same be deposited in the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund.