Delhi High Court directs Twitter to take down five tweets of Audrey Truschke against Vikram Sampath

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 [Dr. Vikram Sampath v Dr. Audrey Truschke and Ors]..The order was passed by single-judge Justice Amit Bansal on a suit by Sampath who approached the High Court seeking ₹2 crores in damages from Truschke and two others.Sampath in his suit has also sought 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 PhD 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.The Court also did not pass any order against news portal The Wire which had carried a news report on alleged plagiarism by Sampath. The Wire had carried a story where historian Janaki Bakhale had alleged that Sampath had copied her work without proper credit. The Court specifically said that it will not pass any order against a news website since it had only published what Bakhale had said. .The suit filed through advocate Mukesh Sharma was argued by Raghav Awasthi. Advocate Jawahar Raja appeared for one of the historians and Senior Advocate Sajan Poovayya appeared for Twitter.