NOTICE
M-20, LGF, Lajpat Nagar-II
New Delhi-24, INDIA
Mail :1984.bhaskar@gmail.com
Bhaskar Bhardwaj Telefax: +91-11-4107-8824
(Advocate and Legal Consultant) 9971414194
Date: 30th Oct, 2014
Through E- mail: editornbc @gmail.com
Noticee(s)
1.) Ms. Vaidehi Taman
425, 4th Floor,
Gundecha Industrial Complex Premises Co-op Society Ltd., Akurli Road, Grovel Bus stop, Kandivali (E),
Mumbai 400101
(And)
2.) Editor-in- chief, Afternoon Voice
425, 4th Floor,
Gundecha Industrial Complex Premises Co-op Society Ltd., Akurli Road, Grovel Bus stop, Kandivali (E),
Mumbai 400101
(And)
3.) M/s Afternoon Voice
425, 4th Floor,
Gundecha Industrial Complex Premises Co-op Society Ltd., Akurli Road, Grovel Bus stop, Kandivali (E),
Mumbai 400101
………..
(WITHOUT PREJUDICE)
Subject: Legal Notice
Sir / Madam,
Under the instructions and on behalf of my client- Sh. Vikas Chaudhary R/o H-45, Kalka Ji, New Delhi. I, hereby serve you the following legal notice:-
1.) That, Dera Sacha Sauda is a socio-spiritual organization that preaches and practices humanitarianism and selfless services to others. The Headquarters of the organization is located in Sirsa, Haryana, INDIA and having more than fifty million faithful followers around the world hereinafter referred as “Organization”
2.) That, the organization promotes the spiritual, educational, social and developmental activities including Mass cleanliness campaign to blood donation drives, from Remarriages of widows to tree plantation. Its social activities also includes disaster relief work during hard times of natural calamities and for displaying keenness of aptitude and devotion for selfless humanitarian activities exercised by the said organization, it has received appreciations from Government officials, Administration and also by universally recognized authority like Guinness World Records for record breaking achievement of the said tasks. The organization has established a fine reputation and has impeccable reputation in the society.
3.) That Patron in chief /Spiritual Guru of the above said organization is headed by His Holiness Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan hereinafter referred as “His Holiness”. Followers of Dera Sacha Sauda, hold character, name, preaching, voice and every activities of His Holiness in high esteems; invested with attributes of the virtuous and lofty. Every follower of Organization has religious feelings towards His Holiness. Every comment which is manifestly defamatory and
libelous to His Holiness, affects every follower of Organizationsocially, mentally and in every sphere of life.
4.) That on 29th, October, 2014 my client who is an ardent follower of said organization, have gone through two online articles published on below mentioned URL’ s, which are completely based on sick imagination / distorted facts, concocted, false accusations, intends to hurt, outrage and defile religious feelings of Dera sacha sauda followers and to defame and disparage said Holy organization.
https://www.afternoonvoice.com/why-so-much-drama.html titled as “GURMEET RAM RAHIM, WHY SO MUCH DRAMA” (hereinafter referred as “FIRST ARTICLE”)
https://www.afternoonvoice.com/cleanliness-drive-or-a-publicity-event.html titled as CLEANLINESS DRIVE OR A PUBLICITY EVENT (hereinafter referred as “SECOND ARTICLE” )
5.) That in “FIRST ARTICLE” you the Noticee No.1 shamelessly and without any basis, left no stone unturned to pronounce and call Holiness as a “CRIMINAL”. That a person and in present case His Holiness, who is standing in his trial before the competent court of Jurisdiction and by calling him “CRIMINAL”, only intends to create a hostile environment, promotion of hate feeling, hurdle in active participation in social activities, interference in court proceedings, prejudice to one’s legal rights and to hurt and outrage religious feelings of followers.
6.) That, you Noticee No.1, concluded and pronounced His Holiness a “CRIMINAL”, as if the Noticee No.1 is a competent judicial authority.
7.) That under the name of reporting news regarding 28th Mega Cleanliness Drive participated by Five Lacs faithful followers of Dera sacha sauda on 28th October, 2014 at Mumbai, you Noticee No.1 maliciously used abusive language, imposed false allegations, actively concealed and distorted relevant facts and conclusively determined infamous sub–judice cases against His Holiness.
8.) That such baseless conclusion of sub-judice matters by you Noticee No.1, is totally wrong, illegal and highly objectionable, intends to only defame, derogate and abuse holy organization and it’s Patron – in –chief.
9.) That you Noticee No. 1 left no chance to humiliate and badly clapper claw followers of Dera Sacha Sauda, by another shameful attempt of calling His Holiness “CRIMINAL” and “CURSE ON HUMANITY” . The use of such abusive, offensive terms in reference to His Holiness is a clear attempt of abusing and badly outraging, damaging and hurting religious sentiments of 50 Million faithful followers around the world.
10.) That title given to both articles “Gurmeet ram rahim , why so much drama?” and “Cleanliness drive or publicity event?” itself reflects the malicious intentions of the Noticee No.1 to denigrate, deprecate and belittle the outstanding selfless services of followers, where world records are made in similar humanitarian drives.
11.) That, intention, ill will and malice of Noticee No.1 is crystal clear, towards organization, His holiness and followers, as Noticee No.1 is also encouraging public at large to comment, share, and circulate such content, being the “FIRST ARTICLE” is also published/shared by Noticee No.1 on her facebook account under following URL;
www.facebook.com/pages/VaidehiNBC/113898045357311?sk=timeline&ref=page_interal
12.) That it is also pertinent to mention here, using irresponsible and derogatory statements in reference towards His Holiness “ His kind of people need to be cleansed and punished for the crime they committed” is totally illegal , offensive, intolerable and cannot be accepted by any community standards, reporting and publishing.
13.) That in “SECOND ARTICLE” Noticee No. 1 failed to even consider about the 27 Mega Cleanliness campaigns successfully conducted so far and the followers have already created history in Delhi with the same drive by cleaning the whole capital within two days on September 21-22, 2011. Moreover, cleanliness earth campaigns in Bikaner, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Sirsa, Jodhpur, Hoshangabad, Kota, Puri (Odisha), Hisar and Haridwar, Holy River the Gangaji, Ajmer, Pushkar, Rohtak, Faridabad, Narela, Karnal, Kaithal, Noida, New Delhi, Sikar, Alwar, Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Sheopur and Tonk have also been successfully held.
14.) That, deliberate omission of said campaigns and other selfless services, you Noticee No.1, without any basis, claiming the association of this holy organization with some political parties who started similar drive recently, whereas first cleanliness drive campaign have initiated by organization in year 2011.
15.) That further, you Noticee No.1, deliberately and without knowing the true facts, omitted to mention about 500 Garbage bin donated by Organization in Mumbai and shockingly, gathering of 5 Lacs (Approx) followers from different parts of country are mentioned as “ bringing a bus full of volunteers from Haryana”
16.) That it is also pertinent to mention here, when Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Hon’ble Chief Minister of India and some other reputed media groups are appreciating for said drives, you all Noticee(s) jointly and severally fabricated an abusive article, containing distorted facts and left no chance to hurt and defile religious sentiments of the followers and lower down their image and reputation in eyes of society.
17.) That it is needless to mention that such joint and several attempts by you Noticee(s) concludes your malafide intentions against His Holiness, Holy organization and followers.
18.) That, my client strongly believe in Freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Constitution of India and its essence but the content published and available on website is highly offensive, abusive, defamatory on face of it and intend to hurt, outrage religious sentiments of followers of said Holy organization.
19.) That, by said articles and wrongful act of you all Noticee(s) jointly and severally have caused immeasurable agony to my client, followers, they have to face social ostracism amongst acquaintances, friends, relations and general public and lowered down the reputations of holy organization. You all Noticee(s) jointly and severally are bound to protect the civil rights of my client.
20.) That you noticee(s) jointly and severally fabricated and publish two different articles regarding same event. FIRST ARTICLE is intended to abuse His Holiness, followers of the organization and hurt their religious sentiments, whereas SECOND ARTICLE is designly calculated with intentions to disregard, lower down reputations and defame organization as a whole.
21.) That, said articles has been designedly and calculatedly posted with the underlying mischief of harassing, hurting and outraging religious sentiments of followers which Noticee(s), jointly and severally have succeeded by publishing the wrong, abusive and false contents, which facts are far from truth.
22.) That jointly and severally you Noticee(s), at the behest of some motivated and interested parties are attempting to demolish the image and reputation of His holiness and organization, by using their website, as a tool to defile, outrage and injure religious sentiments of the followers.
23.) That having full control over the working on website, Noticee(s) have shown absolute irresponsibility in conducting your business of news reporting to get cheap, instant traffic to your website, circulation of newspaper and have purposely promoted and publicized abusive, offensive and defamatory material for their commercial gains.
24.) That the cumulative direct effect of the said articles based on distorted facts by Noticee No.1 and Noticee No.2 is ruining image and reputations of Holy organization, His Holiness and followers and to obliterate all their contributions to the society and in administration.
24.) That after the publication of such news articles on your website, my client and large number of followers has been receiving telephonic calls from many of their relations, friends and neighbours making frantic inquiries from my client with regard to the facts and circumstances as published in these news articles.
I, therefore, call upon you to tender an unconditional apology to His Holiness and followers of Dera Sacha sauda, within 7 Days of the receipt of this notice and print the same on the front page of your newspaper “Afternoon voice”, publish it on homepage of your website www.www.afternoonvoice.com and remove the article from all websites/ URL’s/ Facebook owned or controlled by you Noticee(s).
You are further directed to pay a sum of Rs.51,000/-(Fifty one thousand) towards the legal charges for sending you the present legal notice;
In case you do not tender the said unqualified apology, my client will be left with no other option but to initiate criminal proceedings against you at Delhi Jurisdiction for outraging, hurting religious sentiments of Dera sacha sauda followers and under other relevant provisions of law, which you Noticee(s) will be personally, jointly and severally responsible.
A copy of notice and article kept for record
S/d-
(Bhaskar Bhardwaj)
VAIDEHI’S RESPONSE
To,
Mr Bhaskar Bhardwaj,
Lajpat Nagar,
New Delhi.
By way of introduction, I am a reputed journalist with impeccable integrity. I am also the editor of Afternoon Voice and also various other newspapers.
I am in receipt of your notice dated 30th October 2014
In this you claim that I had the temerity to defame one of the Spiritual Gurus with a following of 50 million followers, renowned worldwide.
- Firstly, we at Afternoon Voice strongly object to the vile language and the highly aggressive tone used in the notice. We can respond in kind, but we chose to be a bit more civil with you. Afternoon Voice aims at promoting transparency within the media system by engaging in an honest and objective reporting/analysis of news and events. It has been a leader in parallel media and has received several accolades. We have high standards and continue to preserve them and hence will not stoop to lower them even in a legal notice and use any vile, abusive or aggressive language and tone.
- If you wished to clarify some aspect of the news printed, you ought to have engaged with us either in the comments section or by sending us an email or a guest post. Yet you chose to issue this highly malevolent notice, hoping to intimidate us into a meek apology. Unfortunately, while the meek may inherit the earth, they are bound to be shown no favour by Spiritual Gurus such as your client. So, let’s cut right to the chase and explore your alleged grievances articulated rather flatulently in over 5 pages of a highly intemperate legal notice.
- To begin with, we’ll focus only on the “illegal and defamation” outlined in your notice, and not so much on statements that “hurt and outrage” your client or his ’50 million followers’ in any way. After all, if we go down that path, we could send you stacks of material originating from your client that cause the same effect on us. More importantly, we’re certain that your clients are not paying you for any determination of “hurt and outrage to 50 million followers” So if one were to separate out the wheat from the chaff of your rather tedious legal notice, you’ve effectively alleged only one legal wrong, namely that of defamation. And it is on this alleged wrong that we focus our reply upon.
Firstly, as any law student in a decent law school will inform you, in order to constitute the legal wrong of defamation, you need to prove that the statements made by us necessarily lowered the reputation of your client in the eyes of a “reasonable” public. Secondly, even if the said statements lowered the reputation of your esteemed client, they are exempt from legal liability, if it can be shown that they encapsulate the truth or amount to a fair comment/opinion. Thirdly, the public interest factor plays an important role in all of this and any fair reportage on matters of public interest are generally exempt. But what in our reporting amounts to the legal wrong of “defamation” in that the said statement lowered the reputation of your client? If Freedom of Press means defamation and if the law has changed in this regard, please do intimate us, so that we may notify our readers of this sea change, which has gone unnoticed, without so much as a whisper.
- We could have also spoken about these issues and if your legal notice had not been so aggressive and had used words like “Please” and “thank you” are words that have unfortunately become relics
In this fast paced world of ours, and even more so with fast paced lawyers such as yourselves. We would have made you understand that there is in fact no defamation as is claimed by you.
- Most important of all I have reiterated again and again that you must refer to the references
- You keep speaking about intent at every given opportunity but surely Again, we assume that as a qualified lawyer, you are well aware of the distinction between an opinion and a fact and a feeling.
- The allegations of false reporting made in your legal notice are preposterous, to say the least. If you had the patience to read the post carefully, you would have noticed the same. As already mentioned above we have also quoted the references used. Also we have no ill will against anyone in the article so the question of false reporting and of actively concealing and distorting facts does not arise.
- So instead of engaging in any discussion of any sort you chose instead to vent your animosity and target an innocent and brave who penned her piece in good faith and backed it up with very credible sources, including the views. We are particularly amused at your allegation that a young journalist
Has lowered your reputation by reporting the truth.
It’s quite obvious that you may not take Wikipedia or Facebook to court so preying on someone not your size is coming across as your speciality.
- It is surprising how you’ve twisted simple sentences to reach fanciful conclusions. We belong to the land of Yoga no doubt, but this is simply too much of a Stretch! Clearly, neither your client is not hapless and is ready to wage a war in court.
- To conclude, we strongly and staunchly deny all your puerile claims. We take strong exception to your imputation of bad faith to whose writings in the paper have always reflected the highest values of journalistic integrity and passion. If you continue with this character assassination and threaten us any further, we will be constrained to initiate legal proceedings against you. This will needlessly fill the coffers of two sets of lawyers, but perhaps that’s what you really want. In the sincere hope that your client is smarter than you, and does not waste the time on the legal system
My lawyer has kindly agreed to represent me for free to fight the cause of right as is her wont to do. For this she has recently been awarded the best lawyer in India for women’s rights .She will not tolerate any wrong heaped upon the esteemed forth estate, most of whom are her friends too. Being an Armed Forces child always standing up for the right is what she believes in and has always done.
Bravely,
Vaidehi Sachin
Employees of Afternoon Voice
