The Delhi Excessive Court docket on Tuesday vacated its order instructing journalist Abhishek Baxi to take away a publish from social media platform X through which he seemingly criticised fellow journalist Rohan Dua for the kind of questions requested to Olympic medallist Manu Bhaker.
“You might be one of the crucial enticing females – lovely females – in India’s historical past of Olympics,” Baxi’s August 16 publish quoted Dua as having mentioned in his interview with Bhaker for The New Indian.
Baxi mentioned on X that he had been “served an injunction order [on September 4] by attorneys of Rohan Dua for my tweet about his inquiries to ace shooter Manu Bhaker”.
Dua had sought directions to Baxi to delete the allegedly defamatory publish, saying he was aggrieved by the “false” and “dangerous” statements that it had led to.
Customers of the social media platform had labelled Dua as “creepy” and “unprofessional” resulting from Baxi’s publish, his plea contended.
Nevertheless, the court docket on Tuesday famous: “There may be nothing defamatory on this. That is [Baxi’s] opinion which he’s entitled to.”
The bench additionally remarked that individuals have been entitled to opine that Dua mustn’t have interviewed Bhaker in a specific method.
“It can’t be countenanced {that a} social media publish which states two admitted information as per [Dua’s petition] together with an unedited and non-manipulated embedded video, may quantity to defamation warranting instant deletion from the social media platform,” the court docket mentioned.
It added: “The identical would forged a chilling impact on free speech, the place mere replica of information to facilitate public discourse would undergo the results of everlasting deletion.”