In O.S.No.104/2022-APDC-District Court grants interim injunction in favour of Isha Foundation; Directs VICE Media to block URL containing defamatory article against Sadhguru & Foundation
ADJ V.S.Anjaneya Murthy [06-09-2022]

Read Order: Isha Foundation Isha Yoga Centre Vs. Pallavi Pundir And Ors

Tulip Kanth

Vijayawada, September 10, 2022: The Vijayawada District Court has asked Vice Media Group to block the URL containing defamatory article against Isha Foundation and Sadhguru while observing that if the article is continued in the URL address referred to in the petition, then the reputation of the petitioners will be damaged.

The Second Additional District Judge-Cum-Metropolitan Sessions judge, Vijayawada, passed an ex-parte ad-interim order thereby directing the Media Group to block the URL of the defamatory article authored by Pallavi Pundir.

The petition was filed by the non-profit volunteer Organization which has a dedicated mission towards raising human consciousness as well as fostering global harmony with  a volunteer base of Organization of 11 million volunteers across 300 centers. It was the petitioner’s case that the dispute in the present matter arose when, Pallavi Pundir (first Respondent) wrote a defamatory article and Vice Media LLC (Second respondent), a digital media platform, published the same on its platform bearing the caption “This Climate Guru is a Celebrity in the US. In India, He’s Accused of Destroying a Forest”.

According to the petitioners, the entire publication was a false one and directly targeted at the petitioners and Sadguru, thereby amounting to defamation apparent on the face of it.

The petitioners contended that the contents of the articles published by the Respondents were not in any manner a fair comment but rather a selective presentation of false assertions. Thus, the petitioners filed the main suit seeking for a mandatory injunction directing the Respondents to remove the defamatory publication on the URL and also seeking for a permanent injunction restraining the respondents from re-publishing the same. 

The Petitioners had also filed this petition seeking for an ad interim injunction directing the Respondents to forthwith block the URL. The suit was filed by the Plaintiffs in view of the conduct of the defendants in having authored and published a defamatory article against Plaintiff. The team of lawyers, involved in the matter, consisted of Advocate Badrinath Ponnada, briefed by a team from Athena Legal led by Advocates Simranjeet Singh,Pulkit Gupta, Rhea Gupta,Karan Jain, Manas Syal and Zoya Junaid.

Referring to the article in question, the ADJ was of the opinion that  some defamatory allegations were made against the petitioners in the said article. The ADJ also took note of various admitted documents including the one in which the respondents refused to comply with the demands made by the petitioners in their notice and did not agree to remove the publication article from the URL as demanded by the petitioners.

Asserting that the Respondents had no right to make any allegations against the petitioners without any basis and the Respondents failed to substantiate their act in publishing the aforementioned article against the petitioners, the ADJ held, “No doubt if the defamatory article published by the Respondents is continued in the URL address referred in the petition, certainly the reputation of the petitioners will be damaged.”

On the defence of fair comment, the ADJ opined that the respondents did not produce any document to support this contention. The Judge further noticed that if the URL address was not blocked, then certainly everybody in the world would have access to the said article and in such a case much irreparable injury and damage would be caused to the reputation of the petitioners.

Considering that the balance of convenience and irreparable injury were in favour of the petitioners, the Court granted an ad-interim injunction against VICE Media thereby directing them to block the URL forthwith until further orders. The matter has now been posted to September 20, 2022.