HC red signal to Jaya biography

Apr 27, 2011 |

Correspondent

chennai

Tags:

The Madras high court on Tuesday restrained Penguin Books India Private Limited from publishing former chief minister J. Jayalalilthaa’s biography 'Jayalalithaa — a Portrait' without prior written consent and verification from her.

Justice V. Ramasubramanian granted the interim injunction till June 7 and ordered notice to Penguin Books, Ms Vaasanthi, author of the biography, and Outlook, a weekly magazine, on a suit filed by Jayalalithaa.

According to Jayalalithaa, it was customary for any journalist to verify the facts with a person concerned and publish the item along with that person’s version and more so when a biography was to be published.

However, Penguin Books was proposing to publish a biography Jayalalithaa — a Portrait, authored by Vaasanthi, with purported excerpts from what it had been published in March 2011 issue of Outlook.

Pointing out some of the contents of the article which contained among other things, her name at her birth, her father and brother names to emphasise their connection to the Mysore palace, incidents of attack on former IAS officer Chandralekha and DMK advocate R. Shanmughasundaram, her personal matters and reference to her close friend Sasikala, Jayalalithaa said such a publication would spoil her image and also damage her status in politics as well as in her public life.

She said it was a violation of right to privacy, which was available to her. The biography to be published by Penguin Books was false, reckless with total disregard for truth.

It was malice and was beyond all limits of decency. The statements made in biography together with innuendos were false, frivolous and defaming with intention of maligning her, she added.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/70257" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-5f9ae1bdb646650d6bc076bfbb890a48" value="form-5f9ae1bdb646650d6bc076bfbb890a48" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88359416" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>