Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday refused to restrain Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik from posting against NCB's Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede's father and family.
The court passed the order on a defamation suit of Rs 1.25 crore filed by Dnyandev Wankhede, father of Sameer Wankhede against NCP leader Nawab Malik, for defaming his son and other family members. The senior Wankhede urging the court to restrain Malik from making any defamatory statements against the family till the disposal of his suit.
Passing the order, the court of Justice M Jamdar said that the Minister can make statements against Wankhede and his family, but only after reasonable verification. In a series of exposes in the past over seven weeks, Malik has accused Sameer of allegedly submitting a fake caste certificate to get a UPSC job in IRS cadre under a reserved category.
The Wankhedes rubbished the allegations as being false and baseless.
Noting that the ‘right to privacy’ must be balanced with the ‘freedom of speech’ and people have the right to comment on the doings of a person in official capacity, the court observed that serious allegations (of extortion) have been levelled against Wankhede by NCB witness Prabhakar Sail in the cruise party raid case.
Reacting on the court order, Nawab in a tweet from Dubai, said "Satyameva Jayate… The fight against wrongdoings will continue…"
Earlier on the day, Nawab Malik tweeted photograph of Sameer Wankhede signing his 'Nikah Nama'. The photo shows the NCB officer wearing a skull cap and sitting beside a Muslim cleric and the Nikah Nama shows his name as Sameer Dawood Wankhede.
With this controversial visual, NCP leader Malik attempted to corroborate his accusation that the NCB Zonal Director converted to Islam, married a Muslim woman and dumped her without proper divorce.
The Minister alleged that the officer also forged his caste certificate so as to get a job at the anti-drugs agency.
Whereas, the Wankhede family have vehemently denied such charges and asserted that the Minister was ruining their public image with his confounded allegations.
The photo tweeted by the Minister is the latest in a string of attacks, which were unleashed after an NCB team led by Sameer Wankhede raided a cruise ship and arrested Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan. Malik has constantly maintained that the October 3 raid was fake and the NCB's swoop was done at the behest of BJP.
As a fallout of relentless allegations, a departmental inquiry was initiated against Wankhede and subsequently, he was ousted as the investigating officer of the cruise drugs case. (In puts from UNI)