Delhi HC asks Twitter to take down posts by historian that allege plagiarism

The Delhi high court on Thursday directed micro-blogging site Twitter to take down several tweets made by academician Audrey Truschke against historian Dr Vikram Sampath over allegations of plagiarism by him concerning his work on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

The bench of Justice Amit Bansal also sought the response of Meta Inc, the parent company of social media platform Facebook, after Sampath alleged that defamatory content was circulated on the platform.

The court, however, did not pass any orders to take down the Facebook post since it is not a party to the petition yet.

In his defamatory lawsuit, Sampath said he is the author of a critically acclaimed biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London. However, academicians Dr. Audrey Truschke, Dr. Ananya Chakrabarti, and Dr. Rohit Chopra, in a recent letter to the Royal Historical Society in London, accused him of plagiarism. Truschke and others later sent another communication to the society alleging further plagiarism in his work and this was also posted on Twitter and Facebook, he said.