The Delhi High Court on Monday refused to entertain a separate petition challenging a single judge’s order requiring the removal of all allegedly defamatory content linking Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s daughter, Himayani Puri, with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
However, a bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Renu Bhatnagar asked the petitioner, Kunal Shukla, a Raipur-based activist, to file an application setting aside the single judge’s March 17 order and asked the single judge to consider the matter immediately on April 23.
The panel said: “We will raise our hands on any observation; go there (before the single judge) and object. Submit your residence leave there, and the court will consider the matter… The matter will be presented to the single judge on April 23, and the court must decide on the residence leave request, without being affected by any of the observations.”
The court passed the order after Shukla’s counsel, senior advocate Vikas Singh, asserted that the March 17 order had been passed without giving an opportunity to be heard or issuing notice. Singh said the matter amounts to issuing a decision on a defamation suit at the interim stage itself. “The tweet was in February and the injunction was issued in March. What is the urgency?” Singh said.
Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, who appeared for Himayani, opposed the same, asserting that the parties were served before the hearing date.
On March 17, the single judge ordered the removal of all allegedly defamatory content including reports, social media posts, videos and other material, uploaded from IP addresses in India, within 24 hours and barred Shukla and others from publishing similar material in the future. However, the court declined to order an immediate global removal of the content, instead ordering that material uploaded outside India be geo-blocked to prevent access within the country. The March 17 order was issued in a defamation suit filed by Himayani.
Himayani stated in her suit that as of February 22, 2026, a series of false, misleading and defamatory posts and articles were disseminated and amplified across social media and intermediary platforms, including X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, digital news portals, blogs and other web publications. Calling the allegations false, she said in her lawsuit that the baseless claims were strategically spread through sensational and manipulative formats, including edited videos, misleading comments and manipulated thumbnails, designed to maximize public outrage.
Around the world, politicians, celebrities and members of royal families were drawn into the controversy after the US Justice Department released a new trove of nearly three million documents in January related to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
