The Delhi High Court on Thursday ordered social media platform Twitter to take down five tweets put out by historian Audrey Truschke against historian Vikram Sampath in which Truschke had alleged plagiarism by Sampath in relation to his works on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
Judge Amit Bansal passed an order on a suit by Sampath who approached the High Court seeking ₹2 crores in damages from Truschke and two others.
Author Vikram Sampath in his suit has also sought a permanent injunction on publication of the letter dated February 11 written by historians Truschke, Ananya Chakravarti, and Rohit Chopra to Emma Griffin, President of Royal Historical Society (RHS) in Britain.
A set of fresh applications were moved in the suit today arguing that pursuant to the February 11 letter, Truschke and others sent another communication to the RHS alleging further plagiarism in his work and this too was posted on Twitter and Facebook.
It was alleged that another e-mail was sent by Truschke to Sampath’s Ph.D. supervisor seeking access to his doctoral thesis so that the document can be perused for further plagiarism. The Court, however, said that it will not pass any orders against Truschke and others to withdraw these letters or communication.
During the earlier hearing on February 18, the Court had passed an ad-interim order directing historians Truschke, Chakravarti, and Chopra not to publish any defamatory content alleging plagiarism.
During the hearing on Thursday, the Court also issued notices to Facebook since Truschke had posted the letter against Sampath on Facebook. No order to take down the Facebook post was passed though since it is not a party to the petition as yet.
