Delhi HC today restrained publisher HarperCollins from marketing, selling or supplying Sarosh Zaiwalla’s book titled “Honour Bound: Adventures of an Indian Lawyer in English Court”. The court has also restrained London-based lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla from making any “further unverified, unsubstantiated and ex facie defamatory statements”.
Concerning Singhvi and his family, the decision was passed in the favour of Abhishek Manu Singhvi who appeared in person along with Advocates Vijay Aggarwal, Jaiveer Shergill, Naman Joshi and Naveen Kapila.
The suit was filed for a permanent and mandatory injunction with respect to the allegedly defamatory statements contained in Zaiwalla’s book and a Times of India article titled ‘I learnt from Bofors never to act in a case involving internal Indian politics, says Sarosh Zaiwalla’. He has made defamatory remarks against his late father LM Singhvi in relation to the Bofors deal, claimed Singhvi.
Singhvi had also sought ex parte and ad interim order for stay on selling of books and making further deformatory remarks.
He stated that Zaiwalla made a reference that the then External Affairs Minister Madhav Singh Solanki said that a certain Indian lawyer gave him an envelope containing a letter urging the Swiss government to close its inquiry into the kickbacks received by Indian politicians in the Bofors deal. He has mentioned in his book that journalist Vir Sanghvi told him that the lawyer might have been LM Singhvi.
It was further submitted that the publisher HarperCollins failed to act as a responsible publishing house and chose to publish ex facie defamatory statements and content, without any efforts to check the same or by reaching out to Singhvi,
The Court observed that making a “fair comment” implied a genuine effort to reach the truth and a mere belief without any reasonable grounds was not synonymous with “fair comment”.
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The court said that it was the duty of publisher to act with care and caution and remarked “A person is entitled to be treated with dignity. He has right of social reputation as an ordinary citizen. Even if he be a public figure and as reputation has a cherished value and an element of personal security, portions of the book which made readers think that he is an ambitious villain, until so proved in the court of law are necessarily to be restrained from being published and distributed for sale.” “Merely because there have been publications on the same issue, the same does not permit making further unverified and unsubstantiated defamatory statements concerning the plaintiff and his family and publishing the statements made in the Article and distributing or marketing the same to the individuals or book vendors/sellers etc for reading or further resale during the pendency of the suit.Merely because there have been publications on the same issue, the same does not permit making further unverified and unsubstantiated defamatory statements concerning the plaintiff and his family and publishing the statements made in the Article and distributing or marketing the same to the individuals or book vendors/sellers etc for reading or further resale during the pendency of the suit.”
The court further ordered:
“The defendant no. 1 (Zaiwalla) is accordingly restrained from making any further unverified, unsubstantiated, and ex facie defamatory statements concerning the plaintiff and his family.. during the pendency of the suit. Similarly, defendants no. 2, 4-5 (Harper Collins, Amazon, Flipkart, John Doe) or their associates, agents, representatives, wholesalers and/or distributors are restrained from marketing, selling or supplying the book titled “Honour Bound: Adventures of an Indian Lawyer in English Court” to individuals or bool vendors/sellers for reading or further resale during the pendency of the present suit till the next date of hearing.”
The matter has been adjourned and will be heard on May 4.
Read the case details here:
