Why ₹50L defamation cost on Saket Gokhale is a lesson for all influencers

On July 1, the Delhi high court ordered Trinamool MP Saket Gokhale to pay former diplomat Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri Rs 50 lakh as damages in a defamation case. Lakshmi, whose husband Hardeep Puri is a Union minister, had sought Rs 5 crore from Gokhale. That’s nothing in the world of defamation suits: recall how businessman Anil Ambani sought Rs 10,000 crore from elder brother Mukesh in 2008. But for an Indian court to actually award huge damages for defamation is unusual.Last year’s Delhi HC order to news portal Tehelka and its journalists to pay Rs 2 crore to Major General (retired) MS Ahluwalia comes to mind first. In January this year, the Madras high court also ordered YouTuber Joe Michael Praveen to pay Rs 50 lakh as compensation to transgender politician and journalist Apsara Reddy. In both cases, the “enormity” of defamation influenced the award.So, why was Gokhale hit with a steep penalty? There were two reasons. One, of course, was the scandalous nature of his remarks posted on X (then Twitter), and two, his large social media following, which amplified the harm to the Puri couple’s reputation.As the court said in its verdict, when a person making allegations is an influencer with a large following, like Gokhale, “messages on social media generate a social-media chain reaction as it were, which is no less dangerous in today’s milieu than a nuclear reaction gone out of control”.Although Gokhale has said he will appeal the judgment, the case could set a precedent, because if courts start holding influencers to account in proportion to their following, every wannabe social media star would have to remember that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. Casting aspersions In June 2021, Gokhale posted tweets raising doubts about the source of funds for the Puris’ “$2-million” apartment in Geneva, Switzerland. He posted the first two tweets on the matter on June 13. Although he didn’t name the Puris, both 1974-batch Indian Foreign Service officers, he tagged finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.In his first tweet Gokhale asked, if former Indian civil servants bought a property worth $20 lakh (Rs 10 crore at the time of purchase) while in service, with no other income but their salaries, would the ED (Enforcement Directorate) investigate the case, and would that investigation be impartial. In his second tweet he added that the property was worth Rs 10 crore at the time of purchase, and Rs 25 crore in June 2021. 111537047Ten days later, on June 23, Gokhale filled out the details in a thread of nine tweets. He said Lakshmi and Hardeep Puri were in the annual salary band of about Rs 12 lakh each when they bought the 16-lakh CHF (Swiss franc) property around 2006. He placed its purchase value at Rs 12.9 crore, and said Hardeep’s declaration from 2017 reported it as Lakshmi’s asset, bought with a 10.6-lakh CHF loan from UBS Bank.Hints of corruptionThen, Gokhale drew his conclusions without talking to the Puris. He said the couple had made a down payment of 5.4 lakh CHF (about Rs 4.3 crore), and to borrow 10.6 lakh CHF they would have needed to show annual household income of at least 3 lakh CHF (Rs 2.4 crore), plus savings of 6 lakh CHF (Rs 4.8 crore).Gokhale asked how the couple had an annual income of Rs 2.4 crore and savings of Rs 4.8 crore in 2006 as serving IFS officers? He pointedly asked how Lakshmi Puri had made a down payment of Rs 4.3 crore in 2006. He closed the thread by asking finance minister Sitharaman if she would order an ED enquiry into the Puris’ finances.Legal battle beginsAfter moving court against Gokhale, Lakshmi produced employment and income documents that showed the Puris had legitimate means to buy the Geneva apartment. She told the court that she had served as director, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for seven years (2002-2009), and her income in 2005 was over $2 lakh. (The amount isn't clarified in rupee terms given the large fluctuations in rupee-USD exchange rates over this period) After that she served as an assistant secretary-general at the UN in New York from 2011 to 2018, earning $2.5 lakh per year. Throughout this period, she was on leave from the Government of India and did not draw a salary here.Starting 2002, her husband was posted as ambassador to the Permanent Mission of India at Geneva, and received allowances of about $76,000 per annum, in addition to his Indian salary. So, their combined annual income at the time was about $2.9 lakh. 111537195Lakshmi Puri also produced documents to show that her daughter, working with an international investment bank in New York, had made the down payment of 6 lakh CHF for the apartment. Finally, she showed a document to prove that the property purchase was no hush-hush deal but had been duly reported to her ministry in May 2005.While seeking exemplary punishment for Gokhale, Puri relied on a Madras HC order (see box) from last July that held that social media influencers should bear a higher burden of accountability. She argued that her husband, a Union minister, was Gokhale’s real target.“It is clear that the offending tweets were motivated by political considerations,” she said, pointing out that publication of the offending tweets was malicious and had caused “irreversible harm to the fair name and reputation of Puri and her family”.It’s interesting that Lakshmi did not seek Rs 5 crore in damages for herself but prayed to the court that the money be deposited directly in the PM CARES Fund. However, the court told her to donate the money herself. medium nocaption111536713Gokhale’s defenceThe defendant, Gokhale, did not appear before the court at the later stage of the case when witnesses were to be examined and detailed arguments made because, as he tweeted, he was put in jail by “the Modi govt on false charges for six months between December 2022 and May 2023”. So, the HC took only his initial response into account to pass the order against him.In September and October 2021, Gokhale had told court that his information was sourced from minister Puri’s disclosure affidavits, filed as part of Rajya Sabha nomination papers. He said the affidavits did not disclose Lakshmi Puri’s income from the UN or her pension from the Indian government. He argued that her assets as a legislator’s wife ought to have been made public and kept open to comment. Minister Hardeep Puri, Gokhale said, had suppressed her income in his election affidavit. medium111537263Gokhale rejected Lakshmi’s contention that he should have verified the information with her family before tweeting, as the information was available in the public domain and didn’t require separate verification.He also denied having an ulterior motive in posting the offending tweets, and the charge that he adopts devious methods to tarnish the image of his targets. He said he had never insinuated that Lakshmi, along with her husband, had bought the Geneva apartment with “black money”.‘He should have verified’Justice Anup Bhambhani accepted Lakshmi’s reliance on the Madras HC judgment as one of the precedents in her favour. Since Gokhale had more than 2 lakh followers on X when he attacked the Puris, Justice Bhambhani observed: “whatever he (Gokhale) says on that platform has immense reach and therefore great impact. This imposes upon defendant No.1 (Gokhale) additional responsibility, in terms of what has been held in S.Ve Shekher (the Madras HC case).”Justice Bhambhani said it was extremely irresponsible of Gokhale to have put out “derogatory content” without verification, thereby conveying to his followers false allegations. He also took note of the “derogatory and offensive” comments about the Puris that others had posted on Gokhale’s tweets. “It is evident that these responses were a direct and immediate consequence of the offending tweets put out by defendant No.1 and were based on his followers believing and accepting the contents of the offending tweets as true,” the court said. mediumThe court observed that although Gokhale’s first two tweets had not mentioned Hardeep Puri, they posed a question about an ED probe. “The clear insinuation… was that the plaintiff’s (Lakshmi’s) husband had come to own property abroad without having salary or income enough to do so,” the court’s 62-page judgment says.In the second batch of tweets, the court observed, Gokhale presented his own inferences and cast doubts on why minister Puri had not disclosed the current value of the apartment.The judge said while Gokhale was justified in being curious, the least he could have done was to make further inquiries, whether through direct queries addressed to either of the Puris or to competent authorities. Instead, he had “straightaway fired a salvo of tweets, making evident insinuations that the plaintiff (and her husband) had funded the apartment through illicit means,” the judgment says.‘Evidently false’Noting that Lakshmi Puri retired long back, the judge questioned Gokhale’s motive in posting the tweets. He said raising a point would not have been objectionable, provided it was posed as a query and Gokhale “had waited for an answer before putting out anything further in the public domain”. mediumWhy then had Gokhale raked up a “remote and antiquated” matter, the judge asked rhetorically, and wrote: “The answer is obvious. That defendant No.1 was interested, not in the financial affairs of the plaintiff, but of the plaintiff’s husband who even today holds a ministerial post in the Central government.”The court was thus satisfied that Lakshmi’s sources of funds for buying the apartment were clean, and that Gokhale’s tweets were “evidently incorrect, false and untrue”.It also noted how important financial integrity and probity are for holding any public office: “Very few allegations can hurt a person associated with public office more than an allegation of financial impropriety. It is also nearly impossible to dispel misinformation in relation to such matters, once it is disseminated to the public at large.” Will appeal, says GokhaleIn a tweet in response to the judgement, Gokhale claimed that after his release from jail, he never received any summons from Lakshmi Puri or the Delhi HC, and at no point was he personally served with any notice or summons. Since he was not able to defend himself, Gokhale said “the order shall be duly appealed”.The TMC lawmaker described the case as that of “a powerful Union Minister's family trying to silence an activist through a defamation case when asked for accountability.”His tweet added: “Public servants, especially Ministers, ought to be accountable to the people (and I'd say the same also applies to me post-July 2023). If people asking questions are targeted & silenced using defamation suits, it represents a complete throttling of democracy by those in power.”He concluded his statement saying, "Silencing the Opposition by throwing them in jail or suing them for defamation has been a hallmark of the Modi Govt. However, the results of General Elections 2024 show that the people of India will NOT tolerate such brazen authoritarianism anymore. Therefore, the order shall be appealled against legally. And I WILL continue to hold the Modi Govt accountable no matter how many times they try to jail me or silence my voice."