Delhi High Court Seeks Abhijit Iyer Mitra's Response On Newslaundry Journalists' Plea Over Fresh 'Defamatory' Tweets

The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response of commentator Abhijit Iyer Mitra on a plea filed by women employees of digital news platform Newslaundry seeking takedown of fresh (allegedly defamatory) tweets posted by him.

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav issued notice on the fresh application filed by the journalists in their suit alleging that Mitra had posted sexually abusive social media posts against them on X.

The Court granted six days time to Mitra for filing his reply and listed the application for hearing next week.

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.

Earlier, the Court had rapped Iyer for his tweets and after which Mitra had taken down the posts in question.

The suit submitted that the allegedly defamatory posts by Iyer on X (formerly Twitter) were 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 had stated.

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

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

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