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[Saba Sports News] Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the former captain of the Indian cricket team, faces a defamation lawsuit from his previous business partners, Mihir Diwakar and his wife Saumya Das. The couple has approached the Delhi High Court, seeking a permanent injunction and damages, to prevent Dhoni from releasing any defamatory or harmful statements about them in the media.
Dhoni’s legal team argued that the defamation claim against him is baseless, leading Justice Prathiba Singh of the Delhi High Court to decline issuing any interim order. This decision restrains Dhoni, several media outlets, and social media platforms, including Meta (Facebook’s parent company), X (previously Twitter), Google, YouTube, and 30 other media houses and web portals, from disseminating potentially false and defamatory information about the plaintiffs. The case has been deferred to April 3, 2024.
Additionally, Justice Singh instructed Diwakar and Das to clearly articulate their allegations against the media houses accused of defamation. The court requested details on how the reporting of Dhoni’s cheating complaint against them constituted defamation. ANI’s representative, Advocate Siddhant Kumar, stated that the news agency only reported facts about Dhoni’s complaint against Diwakar and Das.
The dispute originates from Dhoni’s accusation that Diwakar and Das defrauded him of approximately Rs 16 crore by failing to fulfill a contract for setting up cricket academies in 2017, which they have consistently denied. The couple sought the High Court’s intervention to stop Dhoni and others from making slanderous claims about an alleged contract breach, describing Dhoni’s allegations as baseless, vindictive, and unfounded.
Representing Diwakar and Das, Senior Advocate Satvik Verma contended that the media has prematurely deemed them guilty, arguing that this is unjust as the legal proceedings are still ongoing.