While acknowledging the potential damage caused by defamatory posts on social media, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has granted interim relief in favour of Awanish Kumar Awasthi, a retired IAS officer and an advisor to Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath.
A Single Bench of Justice Subhash Vidyarthi passed this order while hearing a petition filed by Awanish Kumar Awasthi.
By means of the petition filed under Article 227 of the Constitution of India, the petitioner has challenged validity of an order dated 30.09.2024 passed by the Civil Judge (Sr Div), Lucknow, whereby the trial court has declined to pass an ex parte ad interim order of temporary injunction while issuing notice to the defendants.
The aforesaid suit has been filed for a relief of perpetual and mandatory injunction wherein an application for temporary injunction has been filed by the plaintiff for restraining the defendants from speaking, printing, publishing, selling and/or exhibiting, circulating, streaming and sharing any information, video, contents, etc, in spoken words or in writing, in any newspaper or any public platform or any social media platform, etc, in public domain with respect to the plaintiff which may tantamount to defamation of the plaintiff’s reputation and good name, or from making defamatory statements against the plaintiff while the matter is subjudice before the trial court.
The petitioner prayed for an ad interim injunction to this effect till the disposal of application for temporary injunction.
The opposite party is an advocate and an activist whereas her husband is a former police officer and he has launched a political party. The defendant has published a series of statements on social media platforms as well as on digital news platforms stating that a huge sum of cash was stolen from a bungalow of the petitioner in State of Uttarakhand.
The petitioner sent a notice dated 25.09.2024 through his counsel to the defendant calling upon her to restrain from publishing any further information or statements against the petitioner failing which appropriate legal proceedings both civil and criminal shall be instituted against the petitioner.
Upon this the defendant sent an e-mail to the plaintiff petitioner stating that upon perusal of the notice, she realized that she should tender an unconditional apology to the petitioner.
She further stated that she has deleted the offending post from the social media platform and she has posted a message on the social media platform that she has deleted the post and she publicly apologizes to the petitioner for the agony caused to him. However, even after tendering the apology the defendant opposite party is continuing to make further statements which are derogatory to the petitioner’s reputation and are defamatory.
The submission of the Senior Advocate for the petitioner is that in these circumstances, it was necessary that the civil court should have passed an order of an interim temporary injunction pending disposal of the application for temporary injunction.
He has further submitted that after the trial court passed an order dated 30.09.2024 issuing notice to the opposite party-defendant, the latter has posted some more messages/ statements which are defamatory against the petitioner and which justify the grant of an ad interim order of temporary injunction in favour of the petitioner.
Order 39 Rule 2 CPC provides that in any suit for restraining the defendant from committing any injury of any kind, whether compensation is claimed in the suit or nor, the plaintiff may, at any time after the commencement of suit, apply to the court for a temporary injunction to restrain the defendant from committing injury complained of.
As the posts published by the opposite party prima facie appear to be defamatory and prejudicial to the reputation of the petitioner and the opposite party has herself apologized to the petitioner for his earlier posts, a prima facie case for grant of interim relief is made out in favour of the petitioner. The balance of convenience also tilts in favour of the petitioner as he will suffer a greater inconvenience by refusal of grant of temporary injunction then the likely inconvenience that may be caused to the opposite party by grant of injunction. The petitioner is likely to suffer irreparable loss and injury by the defamatory statement published by the opposite party which cannot be compensated in terms of money.
The Court observed that the matter requires consideration.
The Court granted three weeks time to file counter affidavit for the respondents.
“Keeping in view the aforesaid facts, an interim order is passed restraining the opposite party from publishing any information, video, contents, etc with respect to the plaintiff which may be damaging to the plaintiff’s reputation, till the next date of listing,” the order reads.
The Court has fixed the next hearing of the petition on November 18, 2024.
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