Mumbai : Actors Aditya Pancholi and his wife Zarina Wahab along with their daughter Sana filed a defamation suit worth Rs. 100 crore against deceased actress Jiah Khan’s mother Rabiya Khan for using foul language against the Pancholis on microblogging website Twitter from March 4 to May 1 2014.
“Contrary to reports, the suit was filed on June 18 and not a day after the Honourable High Court transferred the Jiah Khan’s death case to the CBI. It is just a coincidence that hearing of our case was decided to be on July 4,” Pancholi family’s lawyer Prashant Patil said.
Aditya and Zarina’s son Sooraj is facing charges of abetting Jiah’s suicide on June 3, 2014. Khan had started an online campaign after the death of her daughter Jiah on June 3, 2013. On July 2, after hearing Khan’s plea the High Court transferred Jiah Khan’s death case to CBI and asked it to probe the case afresh.
The Pancholis had previously sent Khan a legal notice dated May 3 to refrain from posting such comments on a huge platform such as Twitter, which is used by a global audience. According to the suit, Khan has 5700 followers on twitter globally. They demanded Rs 25 crore for damages and a public apology in leading newspapers. However, since Khan did not reply to their notice or offer an apology or pay any compensatory damages, they moved to file the defamation suit.
The suit mentions 18 tweets made by Khan on Twitter. In two instances Khan referred to Aditya as a transgender.
Pancholis have demanded Rs 100 crore in the said suit which comprises Rs 50 crore for “loss of reputation and goodwill”, Rs 25 crore for “loss of business” and Rs 25 crore for “mental agony as well as physical harassment”. The suit was heard by Justice S C Gupte who has directed them to send a legal notice to Rabiya and gave the next date of hearing on July 9.
While Rabiya Khan refused to comment on the matter, her counsel Dinesh Tiwari said, “This is being done to pressurise my client to not pursue her case against Sooraj in Jiah’s death case.”
