The Delhi High Court has awarded ₹5 lakh in damages to TV Today Network over defamatory remarks made on Twitter against the channel and its senior journalist, Rajdeep Sardesai. The posts, published in 2020 after Sardesai’s interview with Rhea Chakraborty, accused him of accepting bribes, labelled him with derogatory slurs, and even drew disparaging comparisons with controversial figures.
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, while ruling on the defamation suit, held that the tweets were “clearly defamatory” and had the potential to tarnish both the anchor’s professional standing and the channel’s reputation. The Court noted that the defendant, Anurag Srivastava, had been given sufficient opportunity to justify his statements but failed to produce any supporting evidence.
TV Today had argued that the online attacks not only harmed its reputation but also coincided with a dip in revenue, pointing out that the company’s earnings fell from ₹899.57 crore in 2019–20 to ₹819.92 crore in 2020–21. The Court accepted that defamatory content could lead to reputational and financial damage, even if exact losses could not be precisely calculated.
In its order, the Court restrained Srivastava from publishing similar material in the future and emphasized that defamation law is designed to protect individuals and organisations from reckless attacks that inflict unjust harm. It concluded that general compensatory damages of ₹5,00,000 were fair and proportionate given the gravity of the allegations and the absence of any valid defence.
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