In a big blow to alleged historian Audrey Truschke, the Delhi High Court has directed micro-blogging site Twitter to take down five more tweets posted by her against historian Dr Vikram Sampath over alleged plagiarism in his two-volume biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
According to the reports, the Delhi High Court bench of Justice Amit Bansal observed that the tweets put out by Hinduphobic professor Audrey Truschke were defamatory in nature, and asked Twitter to remove five more tweets posted against Dr Sampath.
“Despite ad interim injunction passed by this Court vide orders 18th February 2022 and 24th February 2022, the defendant no.1 continues to post defamatory material against the plaintiff on the platform of the defendant no. 4/Twitter,” the court noted.
The court further noted that Truschke had failed to enter an appearance before the court and added that a prima facie case is made out on behalf of Sampath. The matter will now be heard on July 28.
The court was hearing a petition filed by Vikram Sampath filed by Audrey Truschke and others, including social media platform Twitter over defamatory comments and false allegations brought against him on the platform. In his petition, the distinguished historian sought a direction for taking down further defamatory tweets posted by Truschke on Twitter.
The suit had stated that Historian Audrey Truschke and other persons, namely Ananya Chakravarti and Rohit Chopra wrote the letter dated February 11 to the Royal Historical Society in London, raising serious allegations of plagiarism.
In February this year, the Court had also ordered the taking down of some tweets made by Truschke against Sampath.
Audrey Truschke’s hit job against Historian Vikram Sampath
The controversy started when associate professors of History and Communication from three universities in the USA, namely – Ananya Chakravarti, Rohit Chopra and the infamous Audrey Truschke, wrote to the Royal Historical Society, the UK, making a case for plagiarism against Sampath.
In the letter dated February 11, 2022, the professors have accused Sampath of allegedly “borrowing from essays, lifting sentences without attribution and merely paraphrasing material” from certain essays and thesis dissertations. Not only do their claims completely fall flat when they themselves find required references cited in the index, but their attempts to “dismantle” Sampath’s scholarship have also put their own academic credentials in question.
It is to be noted that on Thursday itself, while Truschke continued with her slander, the Delhi High Court ordered her to take down her defamatory tweets against Vikram Sampath within a period of 48 hours.
The Delhi High Court, on February 18, had passed an interim order restraining Audrey Truschke, Rohit Chopra and Ananya Chakravarti from publishing defamatory online content against Sampath, while the same has not budged to do so by now.
