Sreya Kanugula
On January 22, 2021, the Delhi High Court gave an order of restrain on the scheduled book release of ‘The Ryan School Murder,’ which was going to be published on January 23, 2021, by the publication houses of Juggernaut and Harper Collins.
It was passed by Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri, leading a single bench in an application filed for an injunction against Ms. Lenna Dhankar, the book’s author and the publishing house of Juggernaut Books along with AAJ Enterprises, e-book selling platforms Amazon and Flipkart by the St. Xavier’s Education Trust.
Ms. Dhankar, the journalist turned writer wrote the book with the claim of having succeeded in untangling the ‘messy threads’ wrapped around the terrible death of Prince (fictional name), a 2nd-grade student whose body was found in a restroom at Ryan International School in Gurgram, Haryana around September, in the year of 2017.
In the application filed, the Trust claimed that the impugned book’s title itself was highly objectionable as well as defamatory to the schools underneath it. And that the book was designed for the purpose of getting cheap publicity in exchange for Ryan International’s reputation.
In the submission made by the petitioner, it is stated that upon the publishing of the book, their schools would suffer severely and will lose business due to their reputation being lost. People would perceive the school to be responsible for the child’s murder, it said.
The submittion further stated that the book would drive their present students as well as their parents into panic and deter any more prospective students from seeking admission at their schools.
The court was urged by the petitioner to restraint the respondents from publishing said book and also for directions to be given to them on changing its title.
The order passed by the Additional Sessions Judge’s (ASJ) Court of Gurugram on the 8th of January in 2018 was given the reliance while the accused’s plea of juvenility was heard by the court in the deceased child’s murder case.
That court had ordered for the accused juvenile’s name to only be referred by a fictitious name and that the school will be referred by ‘Vidyalaya.’ Thus, the petitioner urged the HC to remove the words of ‘Ryan School’ out of the impugned book.
After reading the book’s contents, the petitioner also, inter alia, reserved relief seeking rights against the aforementioned.
The Court took all of this into account and ordered the respondents to be restrained from publishing the book until they receive further orders on the same. It also gave the restriction order to Amazon as well as Flipkart from receiving any more orders on the said book and processing any orders that were pending regarding the same.
The respondents opposed the filed application and had asserted the right to freedom of speech and expression in their defense.
The argument of many articles and reports being available in the public domain with the school’s name was also made and therefore, the respondents asserted that it was unfair to place blame solely on them for a case of defamation.
The next hearing date listed on this matter was given as May 10th, 2021.