Arrest warrant against Dhruv Rathee in case from eight years ago

A court of Delhi has issued an arrest warrant against popular YouTuber of India Dhruv Rathee in a defamation case of 2018.

Judicial Magistrate of Saket Court of South-East Delhi Rahul Jain gave this order on Saturday (October 17). The next hearing day of the case has been fixed on October 31.

The case has been filed by Bikash Sanskrityayan, who is also known as Bikash Pandey. His allegation is that Dhruv Rathee had published a video titled ‘BJP IT Cell Part Two’ on his YouTube channel. He alleged that false and defamatory statements have been given about him in that video. However, these allegations have not yet been proved in court.

It has been learnt from court sources that although a summons had been issued earlier against Dhruv Rathee in the case, there had been problems in executing it for a long time. He usually lives abroad. Recently a summons was sent to his address in Gurugram of Haryana. But when the concerned officials went there, they found the house locked. After that the court took the decision to issue a bailable arrest warrant against him.

The claim of the complainant Bikash Sanskrityayan is that in the video published in 2018 he had been accused of being associated with the information technology wing of the BJP and spreading fake news on behalf of that wing. Besides, the allegation of giving bribe to a person was also raised in the video as mentioned in the case documents. The claim of the complainant is that his reputation has been damaged through these statements.