Delhi court restrains publication house from selling, distribution of book based on former Yes Bank CEO

A Delhi court has restrained publisher Penguin Random House India amongst others from selling and distributing a book based on former CEO of Yes Bank titled "The Banker Who Crushed His Diamonds: The YES Bank Story" until the next date of hearing.

The court also restrained Almighty Tech Films from releasing and marketing any movie having any direct or indirect relation or reference to Rana Kapoor without prior consent.

The Additional District Judge, Karkardooma Court Rajesh Kumar on Wednesday said, the Court is in the considered view that plaintiff is entitled to immediate protection to safeguard his reputation. His reputation would suffer irreparable harm if injunctions as prayed for is not granted as much as he would suffer further loss to his reputation.

Accordingly, "defendants and/ or their associates, affiliates, servants, agents, directors, partners, employees, representatives and all other persons acting for and on their behalf are restrained from authoring, making, publishing, republishing, further selling and/or further distributing and/or further circulating the book titled as "The Banker Who Crushed His Diamonds: The YES Bank Story" till next date of hearing, the court ordered.

Rana Kapoor, the former Yes Bank CEO and Managing Director had approached the Court through his advocates Vijay Aggarwal, Naman Joshi, and Rhythm Aggarwal and assailed the defamatory book that had been authored by Furquan Moharkan and published by Penguin.

Kapoor had also assailed the movie being made based on the book by a Jodhpur-based company Almighty Tech Films. In the book Furquan Moharkan had made various baseless and scurrilous allegations against Kapoor without any basis and painted Kapoor in a negative light as a "villain", "control freak", and a "fixer".

In June this year Almighty Films which had previously produced a film based on former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's life called "The Accidental Prime Minister" had stated that it had bought the rights to make a movie based on the book authored by Moharkan and based on Rana Kapoor's life.

Appearing for Kapoor his advocate Vijay Aggarwal contended that the defamatory book available online and offline had been written about Kapoor without any inputs from Kapoor or his family and had relied on statements of undisclosed witnesses which had allegedly been analysed by Moharkhan.

Further, Almighty Tech Films were now in the process of producing an unauthorized bio-pic based on the book which was likely to cause further prejudice to Kapoor who is an accused in various cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation and has been in judicial custody since March 2020.

In the course of his arguments, Aggarwal contended that Kapoor's right to reputation as well as a fair trial were being jeopardized for commercial gain by the publisher, author, and the production house. Aggarwal also submitted that Rana Kapoor had not been found guilty by any court and like any other person in India had a constitutional right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

( With inputs from ANI )