News Mania Desk/ Piyal Chatterjee / 20th September 2024
Bollywood star Salman Khan has demanded an apology from Asia News International (ANI), the news outlet that broke the story of his defamation, and the attorneys of the two people arrested in the firing case outside of Khan’s residence. The news article claimed that Khan had “known relations” with the group “D-Company,” which is run by underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim. Through the legal company DSK Legal, Khan has submitted a legal notification objecting to the news report that ANI published on its website.
Additionally, the legal notice mentioned that Amit Mishra, an advocate, shared a bit of himself on behalf of Vicky Gupta and Sagar Pal, the two accused. According to Mishra in the byte, , “The victim (Salman Khan) has known relations with a gangster, perhaps he wants to get the accused killed. This is the allegation of the accused (Vicky Gupta and Sagar Pal). We’ve written to the Central government, Maharashtra and Bihar governments for their protection.”
“Our client (Khan) denies all the allegations made by Mishra against him in the Impugned Article and our client states that the allegations therein are absolutely false, baseless, malicious, grossly defamatory/derogatory, misleading, damaging and are made with an intent to malign the image and goodwill of our client before the public at large, which our client has painstakingly developed by him over the years. Our client states that in fact he is a victim of the criminal act that was perpetrated upon him by certain individuals,” the notice read.
The piece, according to Khan’s legal team, is a “tactic to gather sympathy from the public at large, and to distract their attention from the matter at hand”.
Khan therefore required an unqualified apology from Mishra as well as from ANI, adding that it needed to be published in major newspapers within 48 hours. In addition, he requested that the publication remove Mishra’s video and the story.
