Newslaundry Women Employees File Defamation Suit Against Abhijit Iyer Mitra In Delhi High Court Over Alleged Abusive Tweets

Nine women employees of digital news platform Newslaundry have filed a defamation suit in the Delhi High Court against Abhijit Iyer Mitra alleging that he had posted sexually abusive social media posts against them on X.

The defamation suit seeks a public apology from Mitra and Rs. 2 crore as damages and compensation for the alleged defamation.

In the interim, the suit seeks take down or removal of the impugned posts from Iyer's X handle.

The women journalists are Manisha Pande, Ishita Pradeep, Suhasini Biswas, Sumedha Mittal, Tista Roy Chowdhury, Tasneem Fatima, Priya Jain, Jayashree Arunachalam and Priyali Dhingra. Newslaundry is also one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

The suit submits that the allegedly defamatory posts by Iyer on X (formerly Twitter) are libellous, unfounded and misconceived, tainted with collateral objectives, having been made knowingly and deliberately, calculated to harm the dignity and reputation of the women employees.

While fair criticism of journalistic work is welcome, nobody deserves to be personally humiliated, the plaintiffs stated.

As per the suit, Iyer, through his series of posts on X platform, has “falsely and maliciously” labelled the women employees using allegedly derogatory terms and slurs, referring to them as 'prostitute' and their workplace as a 'brothel.

It adds that all the subscribers of Newslaundry are also referred to as "prostitutes" in Hindi, without appreciating that they range from doctors, to lawyers, to judges, to teachers, to scientists, to architects, to engineers, amongst others.

The suit further submits that even sex workers have dignity and that the term 'prostitute' as an insult is not only an attack on women journalists, but it also reinforces deeply regressive and violent attitudes toward sex workers, many of whom already face systemic marginalisation and stigma.

“No woman/ person deserves to be dehumanised. No profession deserves to be weaponised as an insult. These remarks strip women—whether journalists or sex workers—of agency, identity, and respect,” the plea said.

It adds that Iyer's posts cannot be covered with free speech or journalistic criticism or even satire or fair comments.

“They are sexist slurs aimed at humiliating women professionals in Plaintiff No. 10's organisation, and they directly attack their dignity and right to work without fear or sexual harassment, apart from a attack on the Plaintiff No. 10 organisation,” the plaint states.

The suit will be heard tomorrow by Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav.

The suit has been filed through Advocate Uddhav Khanna and Dhruva Vig.

Title: Manisha Pande and Ors v. Abhijit Iyer Mitra and Anr.