Abhijit Iyer Mitra Moves Delhi High Court Seeking Rejection Of Newslaundry Journalists' Defamation Suit Over Alleged Abusive Tweets

Abhijit Iyer Mitra has moved the Delhi High Court seeking rejection of the defamation suit filed by nine women employees of digital news platform Newslaundry alleging that he had posted sexually abusive social media content against them on X.

Mitra has filed the application under Order 7 Rule 11 of Code of Civil Procedure, along with an application seeking condonation of delay.

The matter came up for hearing before Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav. However, at request of Mitra, the plea has been listed for hearing on February 26, 2026.

The defamation suit seeks a public apology from Mitra and Rs. 2 crore as damages and compensation for the alleged defamation.

The women journalists are Manisha Pande, Ishita Pradeep, Suhasini Biswas, Sumedha Mittal, Tista Roy Chowdhury, Tasneem Fatima, Priya Jain, Jayashree Arunachalam and Priyali Dhingra. Newslaundry is also one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

Earlier, the Court had rapped Iyer for his tweets and after which Mitra had taken down the posts in question.

Later, Newslaundry filed an application seeking takedown of fresh (allegedly defamatory) tweets posted by him.

The suit submitted that the allegedly defamatory posts by Iyer on X (formerly Twitter) were libellous, unfounded and misconceived, tainted with collateral objectives, having been made knowingly and deliberately, calculated to harm the dignity and reputation of the women employees.

As per the suit, Iyer, through his series of posts on X platform, had “falsely and maliciously” labelled the women employees using allegedly derogatory terms and slurs, referring to them as 'prostitute' and their workplace as a 'brothel'.

Title: Manisha Pande and Ors v. Abhijit Iyer Mitra and Anr