Haleem video row: Paradise slaps Rs 3 crore defamation against Instagram channels

HYDERABAD: Following a civil defamation suit against the perpetrators of a fake video posted by an online social media channel (Instagram account ‘telugucrimefiles2023’) to defame Paradise Food Court recently, the City Civil Courts, Secunderabad, has ordered action against Shaik Mansoor, Mahboob Hussain of TelenganaCrimeFiles2023 and ARA TV.

The court on Friday extended action against anyone involved in circulating the video. The court ordered to take down the misleading video, comments, posts, and updates in social media accounts or any other links wherein defamatory and unpopular statements were made by the channel against Paradise.

Further, the court granted an ad-interim injunction in favour of Paradise and against the channel, its owner, and another account where the video has been posted, thereby restraining them from making or publishing any defamatory statements, posts, updates, videos, audios, articles, comments, etc against Paradise on any public or private platforms including all social media, internet, websites, TV Interviews, all forms of print and electronic media or through any other medium.

The case was filed by Paradise against the channel for circulating the misleading video uploaded negligently without checking the content of the video to spread falsehood with an oblique motive to tarnish the reputation of Paradise Food Court.

Paradise also sought at the court that perpetrators should jointly pay Rs 3 crore towards the damages through acts to defame and tarnish their reputation.

Paradise said that the customer and the social media channel had hatched a criminal conspiracy with some vested interests to extort money and defame Paradise Food Court in the public thereby harming business interest to the tune of crores of rupees.

"The court has accepted our plea and has granted an ad-interim injunction against social media channels and those involved in it who have circulated the fake video of Paradise shall take down the video. This also extends to anybody who is circulating from the origin. It should also serve as a lesson to many such other ill-intentioned people who wish to damage the reputation of businesses and jeopardise the customer trust,” Gautam Gupta, CEO, of Paradise Food Court said.