X Corp, formerly Twitter, told the Delhi High Court that the videos posted by Congress leaders of IndiaTV chief Rajat Sharma allegedly abusing its spokesperson Ragini Nayak on live television are “not edited or fake”, Bar and Bench reported.
In its plea against the court’s ad interim order to take down the videos uploaded by Congress’s Nayak, Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera, it also argued that the raw footage of the incident, available on IndiaTV’s YouTube channel, shows Sharma using the words which he denied.
The court, however, upheld its June 14 order that X and the Congress leaders must take down the tweets and said that their right to challenge Sharma’s claims will still remain unprejudiced.
The alleged incident took place during a show to discuss the election results on counting day, June 4, when the leads for the NDA stood at 286 and INDIA at 243.
During the discussion, Nayak accused Sharma of “doublespeak” and objected to his alleged statement that it’s “not a big deal” if Congress doubles its seat tally.
In his defence, Sharma first said that she was “misquoting” him and then allegedly muttered under his breath: “Kya behen***”.
The Congress subsequently filed a complaint against Sharma over the alleged abuse. Three days later, the anchor lodged a defamation case against the Congress leaders, seeking ₹100 crore in damages.
X said that the basis of Sharma’s suit is that he did not use foul language against Nayak “but if the video is heard carefully and with earphones, he could be heard muttering something”. The court is yet to decide on the matter.
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