White Hat Jr Withdraws Defamation Case Against Software Engineer Pradeep Poonia

WhiteHat Jr has withdrawn its defamation case filed against Pradeep Poonia.

White Hat Jr founder had filed a defamation case against Mr Pradeep Punia

The plaintiff Mr Karan Bajaj on Saturday had filed a 20 crore defamation suit against software engineer Pradeep Poonia. Mr Bajaj has also accused Mr Punia of trademark infringement, disparagement, abuse, breach of privacy, mischief, etc. The plaint further alleges Mr Poonia of hacking into WhiteHat Jr's internal business communications platform SLACK.

The genesis of the controversy

The controversy began in early September 2020 when Mr Punia launched a tirade of tweets and posts on various social media platforms against the plaintiff’s Byju’s owned White Hat Jr. During the hearing Mr Rohtagi read out some of the scandalous tweets done by Mr Poonia.

Mr Poonia had alleged that WhiteHat Jr uses 'housewives' to teach coding. He also claimed that what WhiteHat Jr is doing is no different from sexual abuse as the kids will have 'lifelong issues.'

Defendant’s initial posts started in relation to the White Hat Jr's advertisements concerning an imaginary child who the Plaintiffs christened “Wolf Gupta”, the Defendant’s posts quickly turned more controversial subsequent to the withdrawal of the advertisements, with Defendant claiming that Plaintiff No. 1 had “murdered” Wolf Gupta.

The defendant has also been accused of running slandering campaigns against the plaintiff company on telegram. The plaintiff has been issuing takedown notices for the removal of the alleged defamatory posts.

The plaintiff company has also contended that Mr Poonia tutored a minor and signed her up for various trial classes with the White Hat Jr under fraudulent identities with the sole aim of harassing the teachers conducting those classes and proceeded to record the videos of those classes without the consent or knowledge of the teacher or of Plaintiff and then put them up in the public domain.