The Delhi High Court on Monday ordered Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale to pay Rs 50 lakh in damages in a defamation case filed against him by former diplomat Lakshmi Puri, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani directed the Rajya Sabha MP to publish an apology in the newspaper The Times of India and on the social media platform X. The court added that the order must be adhered to within eight weeks.

In June 2021, the Rajya Sabha MP had questioned how Puri could have bought a house for 1.6 million Swiss Francs in Geneva in 2006 with her then income as a former Indian Foreign Service officer.

In his posts on X, Gokhale had also tagged Union finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman, demanding an inquiry into the matter by the Enforcement Directorate.

Subsequently, Puri, who is also the wife of Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri, filed a defamation case against Gokhale and sought damages to the tune of Rs 5 crore.

A month later, the High Court directed Gokhale to delete the posts and restrained him from posting any defamatory content against Puri and her husband.

On Monday, Bhambhani said that the claims made by Gokhale were “incorrect, false and untrue”, Bar and Bench reported.

In its order, the court said that it was “extremely irresponsible of [Gokhale] to have put out derogatory content by way of the offending tweets, without due verification, thereby conveying to his entire band of followers on Twitter [now X] allegations in relation to the plaintiff’s [Lakshmi Puri] financial affairs, which are rank untrue,” Live Law reported.

Bhambhani said that messages on social media platforms generate a chain reaction that is “no less dangerous in today’s milieu than a nuclear reaction gone out of control”.

He noted that the Rajya Sabha MP had brought up the matter on social media because he was interested in the financial affairs of Hardeep Singh Puri and not his wife, Bar and Bench reported.

The order also said that the case’s proceedings took place in a “somewhat unusual manner” as Gokhale had refrained from giving instructions to his counsel and later sought to be discharged from the matter, Live Law reported.

The Trinamool Congress leader also chose not to appear before the court, suggesting that he did not care about the outcome of the proceedings at all, the High Court noted. “On the other hand, the plaintiff [Lakshmi Puri] has assiduously pursued the matter, displaying seriousness of purpose in relation to the claim that she has made,” it added.

The order said that Gokhale’s posts were defamatory in nature and held that Lakshmi Puri “suffered undeserved legal injury to her reputation, which warrants redressal”.

Lakshmi Puri, who was the former assistant secretary general at the United Nations, had said in her plea that Gokhale’s claims were maliciously motivated and factually incorrect.