defamatory. In April 2019, the Thane court had granted injunction on the release of the book.
Raymond Limited recently moved the High Court, seeking urgent hearing and reliefs claiming that Vijaypat Singhania had “surreptitiously” released the 232-page book on October 31.
Senior Advocate Tushad Kapoor, along with lawyers Karthik Nayyar, Krish Kalra, Rushab Kumar, Eram Qureshi and Siddharth Puthoor for the Raymond Ltd sought direction to restrain the current publisher Macmillan Publishers India Pvt Ltd and distributor Amazon India Ltd from further distributing, selling or making available the book to public at large.
Raymond’s plea said Vijaypat Singhania and the publishers had breached the April 2019 order of the Thane sessions court, which had granted injunction against release of the book. The company said the HC, along with the sessions court, had passed orders time to time between February 2019 and April 2019, restraining respondents from publishing the autobiography and the injunction had continued, therefore the contempt petition.
The company said that the respondents in wilful disregard to the court orders have already published the book and the same is available for sale in the market. They added that as the Thane court was shut for Diwali vacation, the company approached the vacation bench of the HC seeking urgent hearing.
Advocate Yakshay Chheda and Yash Bhatia for Vijaypat Singhania opposed the contempt petition.After hearing submissions, a single-judge bench of Justice S P Tavade noted in his order, “It appears that the Respondent has published an autobiography in spite of an injunction order passed against him. The said book is offered for sale through Amazon digitally and by hard copy. The said action is required to be stopped because the injunction order is running against the respondents. I am of the considered opinion that the further damage is required to be averted by issuing the injunction order as prayed for.”
The bench allowed the prayers seeking respondents “to cease and desist from advertising, displaying, writing, editing, printing, authoring, selling, offering for sale, further distribution, selling, or otherwise make available directly or indirectly the purported autobiography with any statements relating to the petitioner, pending the appeal before Thane District Court, which had continued interim injunction.”
