Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed the Congress and the AAP to delete within 24 hours social media posts connecting BJP leader and national secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam to the 2022 Uttarakhand receptionist murder case.

In an interim order passed by Justice Mini Pushkarna on a defamation lawsuit filed by Gautam, the court said the comments would be taken down by social media platforms if the parties failed to comply with the order.

Similar directives were also issued to other persons and entities, including TV actress Urmila Sanawar and the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee.

Gautam had filed the defamation suit against the respondents for maligning
his reputation by identifying him as the “VIP” in the murder case.

The 19-year-old receptionist of Vanantara Resort in Rishikesh was killed and thrown into a canal in September 2022, allegedly after refusing to “entertain” a VIP guest.

Cornered by mounting protests demanding the
VIP’s arrest and handing over the case to the CBI, Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Wednesday said he would meet the deceased’s parents and do whatever they wanted.

“I’ll personally meet her parents and do whatever they ask for,” he said, adding that the audio and video clips doing the rounds on social media on the issue would be taken into cognisance.

“No person involved in
the crime would be spared,”
he added.

During the high court hearing, Justice Pushkaran observed that a prima facie case was made out in favour of Gautam and restrained the Congress and the AAP from posting anything against the BJP leader.

“Till the next date of hearing, the following directions are passed: Defendants 1 to 9 (Congress, AAP and others)... are restrained from hosting, uploading, publishing, circulating ... any content which names, targets, or imputes that the plaintiff is the alleged VIP in the matter,” the court said, fixing May 4 as the next date of hearing.

“Defendants 1 to 9 are directed to remove the various posts and videos uploaded on social media platforms, namely, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and X.

“In the event the defendants 1 to 9 fail to comply with the directions within 24 hours of pronouncement of this order, defendants 10 to 12 (X, Meta Platforms Inc and Google LLC) are directed to take down the aforesaid posts as per the rules,” it added.

In May last year, a court at Kotdwar in Pauri Garhwal district had sentenced Pulkit Arya, the owner of the resort and son of a now-suspended BJP leader, manager Saurabh Bhaskar and assistant manager Ankit Gupta to life imprisonment in the murder case.

The victim’s friend had told police that she was targeted for declining to offer “special service” to a “VIP” who was supposed to visit
the resort.

The name of the “VIP” remained a secret till Urmila posted audio and video
clips on social media last month, identifying Gautam as the “VIP”.

Urmila had claimed that she was the second wife of
former BJP MLA Suresh Rathore and that he had identified a person referred to
as “Gattu” in one of the videos as Gautam.

Gautam had filed an FIR against Urmila and Rathore for maligning his image.

Five separate FIRs have been filed against Urmila and Rathore at several police stations in Haridwar and Dehradun districts.

Sources in the government said on Wednesday that Urmila had appeared before an inquiry committee of the police and replied to over 50 questions. “She was questioned today for about five hours in Dehradun. All the video and audio clips recovered from
her mobile phone will be sent to a forensic lab. She may appear before Haridwar police in a day or two because they too have filed cases against her. The police have no plan
to arrest her at this stage,” said an official of the home
department.

Dhami on Wednesday said the victim’s parents were suffering because of the controversy over the social media posts. “We need to ask them what they expect from the government,” he said.

The father of the receptionist has already said he wanted the CBI to probe the case “because high-profile people
are involved in the murder of my daughter”.

“We want a CBI probe and reopening of the investigation. The three people who are in jail for killing her are only instruments of the crime. The people of the state want to know on whose instruction or for whom the killers decided to attack and murder her,” he told reporters in Kotdwar.

Saurabh Bahuguna, minister of animal husbandry and fisheries in the Dhami government, said he hoped the CBI would take over the case “in view of people’s
sentiments”.

A month ago, Dhami had said that the special investigation team formed to probe the case did its work well, leading to the conviction of the culprits. “There is no need for involvement of any other agency,” he had said.

Uttarakhand residents and Opposition parties have, however, been organising protests in every district daily for the last two weeks to pressure the government to “honestly probe the case, name the VIPs, arrest them and transfer the case to the CBI”.

Ganesh Godiyal, Uttarakhand Congress Committee chief, said: “The evidence was destroyed (the resort was demolished within a few days of the incident) and a probe was started. And now the government is asking everybody to give proof of the involvement of the VIP.”

“The parents of the victim have said on every forum that they want a CBI inquiry into the murder,” he added.