New Delhi, 6 April

The Delhi High Court on Monday rejected an activist's appeal against an order directing him to take down social media content linking Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri's daughter to convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It asked him to air his grievances before the single judge who had passed the order.

A bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Renu Bhatnagar told the single judge to finally decide the issue of whether to continue or vacate its interim order as expeditiously as possible.

The court granted the appellant Kunal Shukla a week to file a reply to Himayani Puri's injunction application before the single judge.

"Let the matter be placed before the learned single judge on 23 April. The single judge will proceed and decide the injunction application or vacation of stay application finally after hearing the parties as expeditiously as possible, uninfluenced by any of the observations," the court said.

Shukla alleged in his appeal that the single judge on 17 March passed a blanket gag order and restrained him from publishing, circulating or disseminating the content in question on social media platforms without giving him due notice or time to file a reply.

The appeal said Shukla published "interrogative content" on social media, which was based on publicly available documents, including international reports and officially released material, and raised questions of public importance.

What was the hurry in not giving me two days over content published in February, senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing on behalf of Shukla, asked during the hearing.

Singh argued that the single judge took every statement by Puri as "gospel truth" and then gave the next date of hearing in August.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Puri, opposed the appeal.

The court suggested after the hearing that it would advance the date of the hearing and grant time to the appellant to file his reply, which the appellant agreed to.

Senior advocate Sudhir Nandrajog, who also appeared for the appellant, requested the court to expedite the trial in the case.

The court however declined the request and said, "We will keep our hands off about any observation, about anything in this matter."

"You go and contest everything there," the bench said.

In her lawsuit seeking Rs 10 crore as damages and an order to restrain several entities from disseminating defamatory content, Puri claimed that there was a coordinated and malicious online campaign to link her to Epstein and his crimes.

She also sought an unconditional apology and retraction from the defendant entities.

"Commencing on or around 22.02.2026, a series of false, misleading and defamatory posts, articles, videos and digital material were published, disseminated and amplified across social media and intermediary platforms including inter alia X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, digital news portals and other web-based publications," the plea said.

She also said she is an accomplished finance and investment professional who is being targeted solely because she is the daughter of the Union minister for petroleum and natural gas.

According to her lawsuit, the defendants disseminated "baseless imputations" that Puri maintained direct or indirect business, financial or personal network links with Epstein.

The allegations are entirely false, malicious and devoid of factual foundation, the plea said.

The Epstein files refer to thousands of pages of documents related to two criminal investigations into sex trafficking by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, including travel logs, recordings and emails, which have been a topic of conversation since Epstein died in custody in 2019.