Why did Delhi court summon YouTuber Dhruv Rathee in defamation suit?

A Delhi court has issued summons to YouTuber Dhruv Rathee in a defamation suit filed by BJP leader Suresh Karamshi Nakhua. Nakhua, an official spokesperson for BJP Mumbai, sought Rs 20 lakh in damages from Rathee for referring to him as part of a group of “violent and abusive trolls” in a video posted on YouTube.

Issuing notice to Rathee and social media platforms X and Google, district judge Gunjan Gupta of the Saket court posted the matter for further hearing on 6 August.

In his suit, the BJP spokesperson said false accusations made by Rathee on the internet have caused "irreparable loss" to his personal and professional reputation, and led to his defamation.

In the allegedly defamatory video titled 'My Reply to Godi Youtubers', which Rathee uploaded to his YouTube channel on 7 July 2024, he had claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hosted violent and abusive trolls like Nakhua and others at his official residence.

In a post on X, the Germany-based Rathee appeared to mock the suit filed by Nakhua, asking why people like him were hell-bent on "humiliating themselves", since Nakhua's "abusive history would now be made public all over again".

Rathi's YouTube channel has over 23.6 million followers, and his supporters have been quick to jump into action, digging up screenshots of older purported social media posts by Nakhua which use abusive and misogynistic language.

For his part, the BJP spokesperson has been serially tweeting news of the summons to Rathee, with a few commentators expressing satisfaction that a "repeat offender" like Rathee has finally been brought to book.

The repeat offence, one assumes, springs from Rathee's trenchant criticism of the Modi government, which began five months ago with a video titled 'Is India becoming a dictatorship?' The video, which has received over 25 million views at the time of writing, was a follow-up on the misconduct of the Chandigarh mayoral elections, which were eventually overturned by the Supreme Court.

In subsequent videos, Rathee dealt with issues such as the electoral bonds controversy, BJP IT cell WhatsApp forwards, unemployment, the ban on Indian spices, and religious polarisation, each of them receiving well in excess of 10 million views.

Many of his supporters have begun expressing the view that the court summons is a way of getting Rathee to come to India so that he may be harmed further.

In two of his recent videos, Rathee has taken on controversial rightwing YouTuber Elvish Yadav, whose run-ins with the law have involved such alleged crimes as the use of snake venom, physical altercations with fans and fellow social media influencers, and the latest, charges of money-laundering by the Enforcement Directorate.