Delhi High Court issues notice in BharatPe suit to restrain Ashneer Grover, family from 'vicious, vitriolic campaign' against company

The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notice and summons to Ashneer Grover and his family members in a suit filed by BharatPe seeking, among other reliefs, orders to restrain them from making defamatory statements against the fintech company [Resilient Innovations Private Limited v Madhuri Jain Grover & Ors]. .Justice Navin Chawla gave Grover, who is the co-founder and former managing director (MD) of BharatPe, and his wife Madhuri Jain and others, two weeks' time to file replies to the interim relief application filed by the company..BharatPe moved the High Court months after Grover and his wife were ousted from the company over allegations of misappropriation of funds. Grover had also initiated arbitration before the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), claiming that BharatPe’s investigations against him were illegal. However, he lost the dispute and was sacked from the company days later..Appearing for BharatPe, Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi showed the Court tweets posted by Grover and his family members following his ouster."These are all his family. They were sacked from the company. We have suit for damages as well."Counsel for Grover claimed that the suit was not served on his client.Rohtagi responded,"We didn't serve them because the moment he knows about it, he will again go on a rampage."Justice Chawla proceeded to issue notice and summons and listed the matter for January 2023..In its suit, BharatPe has claimed damages of over ₹88.67 crore from Grover, his wife and his brother under various heads. This includes a claim for payment made against the invoices of non-existent vendors, amounting to ₹71.7 crore; a claim for penalty paid to GST authorities amounting to ₹1.66 crore; payments made to vendors purportedly providing recruitment services totalling ₹7.6 crore; payments of ₹1.85 crore made to a furnishings company; payments for personal expenditures of Ashneer and Madhuri Jain Grover amounting to ₹59.7 lakh and ₹5 crore damages for loss of reputation to the company caused by tweets and other statements made by Grover and his family members..As interim relief, BharatPe has sought:Disclosure of assets of Grover and his family members; Interim injunction against the defendants restraining them from making defamatory/derogatory statements concerning BharatPe, its directors, employees and/or publicizing the same; Direction to defendants to delete/remove within a period of five days all statements, tweets, social media posts, books, re-tweets, hashtags, videos, press conferences, interviews, comments etc made against the company; Orders granting liberty to BharatPe to approach all social media platforms, media organisations, publications, websites, blogs etc. to seek deletion/removal of all such material..Apart from Rohatgi BharatPe was represented by a battery of Senior Advocates including Rajiv Nayar, Sandeep Sethi and Jayant Mehta. They were briefed by a team from Trilegal comprising Anuj Berry, Sourabh Rath, Bhargavi Vadeyar and Vibhore Yadav.