The Delhi High Court ordered social media giant Twitter to pull down five more defamatory tweets of US-based historian Audrey Truschke against Dr Vikram Sampath.
“Despite ad interim injunction passed by this Court vide orders 18th February, 2022 and 24th February, 2022, the defendant no.1 (Audrey Truschke) continues to post defamatory material against the plaintiff on the platform of the defendant no. 4/Twitter. Further, the defendant no.1 has failed to enter appearance before this court,” Justice Amit Bansal noted in the order.
The Delhi High Court is hearing a defamation case against Audrey Truschke filed by historian Dr Vikram Sampath. Dr Sampath’s lawyers had argued in the court that Audrey Truschke’s actions “reek of an extremely toxic manner of white privilege”.
Since Dr Sampath published a two-volume biography of Veer Savarkar, Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 & Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966, the Leftist and Islamist cabal has been taking multiple routes to bring disrepute to the author.
In a letter to the Royal Historical Society in February this year, three ‘academicians’ from the US, Ananya Chakravarti, Rohit Chopra, and Audrey Truschke, had alleged that Dr Sampath had plagiarised his essay in the India Foundation journal. They had demanded that his membership of the Society be rescinded.
The letter to the Society alleged plagiarism on two counts. It alleged Dr Sampath had not acknowledged the works of Dr Vinayak Chaturvedi and Dr Janaki Bakhale in the speech he delivered at the India Foundation event in 2017. Second, it alleged that the first volume on Veer Savarkar by Dr Sampath had not acknowledged the work of undergraduate student Paul Schaffel.
Contrary to what they had alleged, it was not an essay but a speech delivered at the 2017 India Foundation event. In that speech, Dr Sampath has duly acknowledged the works of Dr Vinayak Chaturvedi and Dr Janaki Bakhale. Secondly, Dr Janaki Bakhale reviewed Dr Sampath’s book for India Today in September 2019 and had not talked about plagiarism anywhere.
Although Dr Sampath had not quoted undergraduate scholar Paul Schaffel, he had made sure to acknowledge his undergraduate thesis in his bibliography of works referenced.
Dr Sampath later moved the Delhi High Court seeking damages of 2 crore rupees and a permanent injunction against the defendants for causing damage to his reputation as “he has shown the academic courage and gumption to challenge the prevailing narrative around a historical figure”.
As reported by the Organiser on 28th February, many historians, politicians and academicians had said that US-based historian Dr Audrey Truschke had forged their signatures on a letter condemning Dr Vikram Sampath’s move to file a defamation suit against her and her collaborators.
