The Delhi Excessive courtroom on Thursday issued a discover and summons to Ashneer Grover, former Managing Director of BharatPe, and his members of the family, in a go well with filed by the corporate looking for orders to restrain them from making defamatory statements in opposition to the corporate.
In the meantime, the fintech unicorn has additionally slapped a lawsuit in opposition to former head of controls and spouse of Ashneer Grover, Madhuri Jain, below Part 420 (dishonest and dishonestly inducing supply of property), mentioned numerous media reviews. Moreover the couple, the opposite defendants within the go well with are Grover’s brother-in-law, father-in-law, and mother-in-law.
The couple has been granted two weeks time to file their response to BharatPe’s utility looking for interim aid. BharatPe has sought:
- Disclosure of property of Grover and his members of the family
- Interim injunction in opposition to the defendants restraining them from making defamatory/derogatory statements regarding BharatPe, its administrators, staff and/or publicising the identical
- Course to defendants to delete/take away inside a interval of 5 days all statements, tweets, social media posts, books, re-tweets, hashtags, movies, press conferences, interviews, feedback, and many others., made in opposition to the corporate
- Orders granting liberty to BharatPe to method all social media platforms, media organisations, publications, web sites, blogs, and many others., to hunt deletion/removing of all such materials.
The matter will subsequent be heard in January 2023.
Throughout the listening to, which came about on Thursday, Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing BharatPe, identified numerous tweets made by Grover after his resignation earlier this 12 months.
As per the reviews by LiveLaw, Rohatgi mentioned that Grover needs to be restrained from working a “vicious marketing campaign” in opposition to the fintech firm. He cited numerous tweets posted by Grover and his members of the family following his ouster.
“These are all his household. They have been sacked from the corporate. Now we have go well with for damages as nicely.”
Counsel for Grover claimed that the go well with was not served on his shopper, mentioned Bar and Bench report, to which Rohatgi responded, “We did not serve them as a result of the second he is aware of about it, he’ll once more go on a rampage.”
Additional, Rohatgi mentioned that whereas being the previous Managing Director, Grover introduced in his whole household.
“To fleece the corporate, they (defendants) created fictitious distributors from Panipat who have been paid 50-60 crores and nothing was bought. The distributors do not exist,” Rohatgi submitted, including that there was a large hiring of staff, mentioned LiveLaw.
BharatPe has additionally claimed damages of over Rs 88 crore from Grover, his spouse, and his brother. This features a declare for cost made in opposition to the invoices of non-existent distributors, amounting to Rs 71.7 crore; a declare for penalty paid to GST authorities amounting to Rs 1.66 crore; funds made to distributors purportedly offering recruitment companies totalling Rs 7.6 crore; funds of Rs 1.85 crore made to a furnishings firm; funds for private expenditures of Ashneer and Madhuri Jain Grover amounting to Rs 59.7 lakh and Rs 5 crore damages for lack of fame to the corporate attributable to tweets and different statements made by Grover and his members of the family.