A Delhi court recently denied ScoopWhoop CEO Sattvik Mishra's request for an interim injunction to prevent former employee Samdish Bhatia from publicly speaking about sexual harassment charges made by the latter against the former [WHOOPSCOOP MEDIA PVT LTD Vs. SAMDISH BHATIA].
Sattvik Mishra was the CEO of Scoop Whoop Media and Samdish Bhatia worked for Unscripted. Bhatia filed a sexual harassment complaint against Mishra and his wife, which is currently being investigated by a Grievance Committee set up under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act (POSH Act). Samdish also addressed his sexual harassment in an Instagram post.
ScoopWhoop was eventually purchased by the Good Glam Group. A new company called WhoopScoop has filed a lawsuit against Samdish Bhatia, preventing him from writing or speaking about any allegations between Samdish Bhatia and ScoopWhoop's CEO Sattvik Mishra surrounding the incident on October 7-8.
WhoopScoop's major defence was that the charges made by Samdish Bhatia were not covered by the POSH Act, which was enacted to protect women at work from sexual harassment, to prevent and resolve complaints of sexual harassment, and to deal with situations related to or incidental to that.
The Plaintiff Company argued that because the alleged sexual harasser (Sattvik Mishra) and the alleged victim (Samdish Bhatia) are both men, the POSH Act does not apply in this case.
According to the decision of Patiala House Court Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Preeti Parewa,
"Expression of a victim's trauma or experience is his/her fundamental right which can only be curtained if it is falls under four broad categories i.e. "libel, slander, defamation", "contempt of court", "offends against decency or morality" and "undermines the security or tends to overthrow the State"."
The Court declined to grant Mishra temporary relief since the case did not fit under any of the four categories.
The Court observed in its judgement that the grant/refusal of an injunction is governed by three primary principles: prima facie case, the balance of convenience, and irreparable injury.
In terms of the prima facie principle, the Court stated that because the complaint was lodged when Bhatia was not a Scoopwhoop employee, the company's image/reputation could not be affected in any manner.
"A legal right/ injury has to be established before considering any case for grant of injunction which prima-facie appears to be absent in the present case. Further, the alleged posts/contents/ video in question do not mention the name of the plaintiff company nor is obscene derogatory/defamatory prima-facie," the Court said.
The Court dismissed WhoopScoop's application.