NDTV’s Gargi Rawat ordered to pay Rs 10,000 to Abhijit Iyer-Mitra for liking social media post

A Delhi court on Monday directed NDTV journalist Gargi Rawat to pay Rs 10,000 as damages to commentator Abhijit Iyer-Mitra in a defamation suit filed by him in 2019, Live Law reported.

The commentator had sought Rs 20 lakh in damages from Rawat and advocate Dushyant Arora. He had filed the defamation suit after Arora alleged in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Iyer-Mitra was a rape accused. Rawat was accused of liking the post.

However, District Judge Satyabrata Panda of the Patiala House Courts fined Rawat Rs 10,000, saying that Iyer-Mitra himself was “no stranger to controversy” and had often made “objectionable, derogatory and reprehensible comments” on social media, Live Law reported.

The judge added that if the amount is not paid within two weeks, it will carry 6% annual interest from the date of the judgement until it is cleared, Bar and Bench reported.

Arora had already settled the matter by publicly apologising to Iyer-Mitra on X and admitting that his claim “had no basis in fact”.

The case stems from a December 2019 exchange on social media.

Journalist Rana Ayyub had called an article written by Mitra for The Print titled “In Rana Ayyub, the White West has found its next Arundhati Roy” a “hit job”. Mitra wrote the article in response to a New Yorker article about the Narendra Modi-led government’s policies and actions against Muslims in...

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