Plea in HC against hearing Pachauri's Rs 1 cr suit in vacation

Women's rights lawyer Vrinda Grover today moved the Delhi High Court against a trial court order to hear during the summer vacation a Rs 1 crore defamation case against her and another woman by former TERI chief R K Pachauri.
The petition came up for hearing before Justice C Hari Shankar, who recused from hearing the matter citing personal reasons and said that it would be heard by some other bench.
The matter has now been listed for hearing tomorrow.
The woman advocate in her plea has sought quashing of two orders of the trial court, including a direction to file a list of witnesses and evidence within one week in the defamation case filed by former TERI chief.

In her plea filed through advocate Anupam Srivastava, she has said that the trial court has listed the matter for recording of evidence between June 19 to June 30 despite her unavailability and her counsel.
In April 2016, few months after the charge sheet against him was filed in the alleged sexual harassment case lodged by his ex-colleague, Pachauri slapped a civil suit against Grover and the other woman for allegedly making defamatory statements against him outside the court room to the media in connection with the case.

He has sought damages of Rs one crore for "false and frivolous allegations" which, he argues, could prejudice his case.

Pachauri has also made three media houses, as well as the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, parties to this suit filed before a Patiala House court here and has sought a permanent injunction against any reporting on statements of the two women who came forward subsequent to the original complaint against him.
Pachauri on February 26 had secured an order from Saket court here making it mandatory that the media houses have to publish or telecast the coverage of the case with a title that "In any court the allegations have not been proved and they may not be correct."
The interim order had further said that, "When such information is published in any page of a magazine or report then it should be in middle of the page in bold letters and it should be five times larger than the font in which the article is being published.