Mumbai court rejects son's plea to stop Vijaypat Singhania autobiography

MUMBAI: A city civil court on Thursday refused to grant interim injunction against the publication of industrialist Vijaypat Singhania’s autobiography, ‘The Incomplete Man’.
City civil judge G R Agrawal rejected a plea by Gautam Singhania, chairman and MD of the Raymond Group, seeking to restrain his father and the publishers, Penguin Random House, from authoring or publishing the autobiography with any statements relating to him and his family members.
Gautam’s lawyers had sought an urgent hearing before the court, saying they feared there would be defamatory statements against him and his kin. The application said some contents of the book were shared with some employees, exemployees and Gautam’s colleagues and associates, and urged the court to call for the manuscript and examine it.
The lawyers cited the Supreme Court judgment on right to privacy to support their request for arestraining order. The judge noted the complaint did not refer to what the alleged defamatory content was.
“Prima facie, it appears the apprehension of the plaintiff is based on hearsay material,” said judge Agrawal. The court also referred to the fractious history of the case. “This court can take judicial notice of the fact that since last three years, (father and son) have made allegations against eachother in the public domain such as newspapers and social media. The controversy in question drew wide publicity. No grievance was made by Gautam Singhania. Hence, he cannot be heard to say that there will be a defamatory statement in the proposed book when he has not taken any action in the last three years against (his father),” the judge said.
He added: “I find that no prima facie case is made out by the plaintiff for grant of temporary injunction at this stage,” and turned down the plea. Gautam’s plea had come after legal notices in August and September to the publisher. The publishers denied the contents were either defamatory or malicious to Gautam. The court pointed out that though legal notices were issued to the publishers, no such notice was issued to Vijaypat Singhania.