Salman Khan Files Defamation Suit In City Civil Court In Connection With Panvel Land Deal

The bone of contention is a 2.5 acres plot situated beside Khan's palatial farmhouse 'Arpita Farms', in Panvel. Kakkad claims he purchased the land parcel from the Khans in 1995.

Khan said that Kakkad began blaming him and his family when the forest department cancelled Kakkad's allotment.

Additional Sessions Judge Anil H Laddhad granted Kakkad time till January 21, 2022, to respond to Khan's notice of motion seeking directions to injunct Kakkad from posting anything against Khan or his family.

The notice of motion for interim reliefs further seeks direction to take down or disable access to the derogatory content, not limited to the content pointed out but all derogatory on social media platforms regarding the Panvel Farmhouse.

Khan has also sought suspension of the social media accounts of Kakkad and other defendants namely Youtuber Sandeep Phogat, Paras Bhat and Ujjwal Narain.

While Khan's counsels urged the court to injunct Kakkad till the next hearing date, Advocate Abha Singh submitted that she had received the papers only last evening and it would be unfair to grant any relief without hearing her side.

She said that case came up for hearing for a video posted in December, despite only urgent matters being taken up. She said her client's biggest defence is the truth. She also said that her client, a senior citizen, had filed several FIRs.

Apart from Kakkad and the three other individuals the other defendants include Facebook Inc, Facebook India Online Services Private Ltd, Twitter Inc, Twitter Communications India Private, Twitter international Company, Youtube LLC, Google LLC and Google India Pvt Ltd.

In the notice of motion Khan alleged, Kakkad is causing grave and irreparable harm, loss and injury to Khan, his family members, loss of goodwill and reputation to them by publishing defamatory, false, derogatory and libelous posts, messages, tweets, videos, interviews, communications and correspondence.

The plea pointed out that Kakkad had attempted to purchase a plot of land beside Khan's farmhouse in Panvel; however that transaction was cancelled by the authorities on the ground that it was illegal.

However, after the said transaction was cancelled, Kakkad started raising false and baseless accusations that the transaction had been cancelled at the behest of Khan and his family members.

In the recent past, Khan's team came across several videos in relation to Khan's farmhouse in Panvel uploaded on the social media accounts of the defendants.

Aggrieved by the same, Khan filed the present suit.

Khan stated in his suit that there is no shred of truth in the defamatory comments made against him.

"Comments made by Defendants travel well beyond the scope of fair comment," the suit stated.