BJP leader Shehzad Poonawalla on Tuesday welcomed the Delhi High Court’s order directing social media firms to remove posts linking Union Minister Hardeep Puri’s daughter Himayani Puri to convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Poonawalla called the High Court’s order a victory of truth and big loss of face for those who levelled these allegations.
He said that the Delhi High Court found that a prima facie case of defamation had been made out and, on that basis, directed all identified defendants (Defendant Nos. 1 to 14), as well as the unidentified John Doe/Ashok Kumar defendants, to immediately remove the impugned content from their respective handles, channels and other platforms, and restrained them from posting any further allegedly defamatory material linking the plaintiff to Jeffrey Epstein in any manner.
“Thus, the removal of the posts by the uploaders themselves would, in effect, have a global impact, as such content would no longer be available for viewing anywhere,” he said.
“The Court further ordered that, if Defendant Nos. 1 to 14 and the unidentified John Doe/Ashok Kumar defendants fail to take down the defamatory content within 24 hours, intermediary platforms such as X, Meta and Google (Defendant Nos. 15 to 18) must remove or block access to such material,” he said.
Hearing a petition filed by the Union Minister’s daughter, the court granted her interim relief, directing the removal of allegedly defamatory online content linking her to Jeffrey Epstein.
The court held that the material in question warranted immediate restraint and ordered its takedown.
Himayani Puri had filed a Rs 10 crore defamation suit seeking a global takedown of posts linking her to American financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
She also requested a John Doe order (a legal order issued by a court against unknown or unidentified parties) to identify and act against unknown individuals responsible for circulating the content.