Even as the Rs. 20 crore case between Pradeeep Poonia and WhiteHat Jr was being heard in a Delhi court, WhiteHat Jr has slapped a similar defamation lawsuit against another critic.
WhiteHat Jr has sued investor Aniruddha Malpani for Rs. 14 crore. “WhiteHat Jr has filed a law suit of Rs 14 crores against me as well, claiming my posts have caused them a loss of revenue!,” Malpani wrote on Twitter. “Pretty much a copy and paste of their plaint against Pradeep Poonia. I hope their lawyer is giving them a discount,” he added.
Malpani, though, has remained defiant. “Hopefully, the truth about your nefarious activities will come out ! You can lie in your ads, but you can’t lie in Court!,” he declared on Twitter.
Aniruddha Malpani has been a longstanding vocal critic of WhiteHat Jr. In a viral tweet, he’d shown how the ages and salaries of Wolf Gupta, the supposed WhiteHat Jr whizkid who’d got a job offer from Google, kept changing over time, from Rs. 1.2 crore to a ludicrous Rs. 150 crore. “WhiteHat Jr is finally getting caught in its own web of lies!,” he’d tweeted on 6th October.
Malpani, who was a prolific LinkedIn user, had also published a post that was critical of WhiteHat Jr and its parent company Byju’s on the platform. Subsequently, LinkedIn had taken his entire account down, which had let to much outrage online about the freedom of speech.
Later, after Pradeep Poonia had managed to gain access to WhiteHat Jr’s internal chats, it had been revealed how the company was using copyright laws to taken down content that it deemed critical of its services. Pradeep Poonia had also uncovered other interesting tidbits, including a Slack chat allegedly showing CEO Karan Bajaj personally admitting that an app that WhiteHat Jr had been showing in their ads didn’t exist, and saying that “they’d have to make it” after a teacher wanted to see it for herself.
Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court today heard pleas from Pradeep Poonia and Karan Bajaj in the Rs. 20 crore defamation case. The court granted a limited injunction against Poonia, restricting him from downloading its copyrighted material. But the courts didn’t provide a full injunction, a fact that Pradeep Poonia highlighted in a tweet. “Delhi HC refused to grant a sweeping injunction against me as WhiteHat Jr wanted in their 20 Cr suit,” he wrote. “They keep trying to silence dissent and have failed. AGAIN! Thanks to all of you who supported me! Let’s continue to fight for transparent and ethical biz practices,” he wrote.