Dhruv Rathee is back in Germany. Do you know why he left so suddenly?
In 2018, he made a video claiming that a private social media user, Vikas Pandey, had offered a Rs 50 lakh bribe to a man named Mahaveer Prasad Khileri to make him speak against Rathee. The video was then retweeted by Arvind Kejriwal.
Following this, Vikas and his family faced abuse, harassment, and threats from Rathee and AAP supporters. He took legal action against both Kejriwal and Rathee for defamation.
The video was so baseless and unfounded that despite being represented by top lawyers like Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Kejriwal had to admit his mistake and apologize in the Supreme Court.
While proceedings against Kejriwal were dropped following his apology, the criminal defamation case against the video's creator, Dhruv Rathee, continued. The courts kept issuing summonses and notices to Rathee in connection with the ongoing trial, but sitting abroad, he did not bother to respond.
He came to India recently to join the CJP's regime-change protests. Two days ago, Vikas Pandey's legal team tracked him to his residence in Sector 56, Gurugram. After Rathee refused to take phone calls or accept the documents directly, the lawyers pasted the summons outside his Gurugram home with the help of the society's security guards.
Realizing that he could be arrested in this case for repeatedly ignoring summonses over the last eight years, he chickened out and left India in a hurry. So much for his respect for the law and the judicial process!