Publication House Restrained From Selling, Distribution of Book titled "The Banker Who Crushed His Diamonds: The YES Bank Story" By a Delhi Court

New Delhi, India, December 23: As reported by ANI, Penguin Random House India along with some other publishers has been restrained from selling and distributing a book based on former CEO of Yes Bank titled "The Banker Who Crushed His Diamonds: The YES Bank Story" until the next date of hearing by a Delhi court today.  

The court also restrained Almighty Tech Films from releasing and marketing any movie having any direct or indirect relation or reference to Rana Kapoor without prior consent.  

The Additional District Judge, Karkardooma Court Rajesh Kumar on Wednesday said, the Court is in the considered view that the plaintiff is entitled to immediate protection to safeguard his reputation. His reputation would suffer irreparable harm if injunctions, as prayed for, is not granted as much as he would suffer further loss to his reputation.  

Accordingly, the court ordered that the "defendants and/ or their associates, affiliates, servants, agents, directors, partners, employees, representatives and all other persons acting for and on their behalf are restrained from authoring, making, publishing, republishing, further selling and/or further distributing and/or further circulating the book titled as "The Banker Who Crushed His Diamonds: The YES Bank Story" till next date of hearing. 

Assailing the defamatory book authored by Furquan Moharkan and published by Penguin,  Rana Kapoor, the former Yes Bank CEO, and Managing Director had approached the Court through his advocates Vijay Aggarwal, Naman Joshi, and Rhythm Aggarwal. Kapoor had also assailed the movie being made based on the book by a Jodhpur-based company Almighty Tech Films. 

Allegedly, in the book Furquan Moharkan has made various baseless and scurrilous allegations against Kapoor without any basis and painted Kapoor in a negative light as a “villain”, “control freak”, and a “fixer”.   

Based on the life of former Prime Minister Mr Manmohan Singh "The Accidental Prime Minister"  producer  Almighty Films stated that it had bought the rights to make a movie based on the book authored by Moharkan and based on Rana Kapoor's life.  

Appearing for Kapoor his advocate Vijay Aggarwal contended that the defamatory book available online and offline had been written about Kapoor without any inputs from Kapoor or his family and had relied on statements of undisclosed witnesses which had allegedly been analysed by Moharkan.  

Further, Almighty Tech Films were now in the process of producing an unauthorized biopic based on the book which was likely to cause further prejudice to Kapoor who is an accused in various cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation and has been in judicial custody since March 2020.   Aggarwal also contended that Kapoor's right to reputation as well as a fair trial were being jeopardized for commercial gain by the publisher, author, and the production house. Given that Rana Kapoor had not been found guilty by any court and like any other person in India, Aggarwal submitted, Kapoor had a constitutional right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.