Sunday 15 April 2001

Hemlata Files Criminal Case For Defamation

Trustees Letter dated 22.03.2001 to Hemlata read ‘Strictly Personal and Confidential’ but no confidentiality had been maintained by them. The trustees had widely circulated this defamatory letter to inmates, locals, police and even made open representation in the court without producing any evidence for my alleged pregnancy. So after issuing Legal Notices to the trustees and one Krishna Belliappa who was supposed to have made me pregnant, as claimed by the trustees, on 03.04.2001, to safeguard our interests, I was constrained to file a defamation case against the Ashram trustees viz. Harikant Patel, Veda Prakash Johar, Dilip Datta, Manoj Das Gupta and Albert Patel @ Avinash together with three inmates viz. Krishna Belliappa, Manjunath, Satyanarayanamurthy.

Even before notice could reach the accused persons, the trustees had come to know about my criminal case and they proceeded to harass and victimize my other sisters. My four elder sisters were issued a malafide show cause notice for an incident which never occurred accusing them of ‘misbehavior and defiance’. This notice contained the punishment without having first ascertained the veracity of the alleged incident.

Immediately after issuing this malafide notice Nivedita’s work was illegally stopped by Chitra Sen at Tresor Nursing Home and no reason was given. Seeing the trustees highhandedness my four elder sisters filed a civil suit challenging the show cause notice back-dated to 02.04.2001 in O.S. No.253/2001 before the Hon’ble I Additional District Munsif at Pondicherry on 09.04.2001, seeking to restrain the trustees from their unjustified illegal actions.

Interestingly on 07.04.2001, the day Nivedita’s work was illegally terminated, trustees issued a reply notice to the legal notice issued by me for causing defamation, based on some undisclosed medical records of Hemlata available at the Tresor Nursing Home. Thereafter the contents of this notice were presented as counter in the interim injunction application filed in I.A. No.814/2001 in O.S. No.215/2001.

The story of allegation of misconduct by Hemlata was subtly changed from trustees’ defamatory letter dated 22.03.2001 to their reply notice dated 07.04.2001 and their counter filed in I.A. No.814/2001. The subtleties made all the difference and clearly indicated that the whole bunch of allegations was a concocted affair by the trustees, hand-in-glove with Chitra Sen, to deny and deprive us justice for Jayashree’s assault.