Two ex-business partners of former Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni have filed a case of defamation against the CSK skipper in the Delhi High Court. According to the report by PTI, Mihir Diwakar and his wife, Soumya Das, former business partners of MSD, have filed this defamation case. Dhoni had previously filed a criminal case against both of them for scamming him around 15 crore rupees.
The couple has now approached the high court, seeking a permanent injunction and damages against Dhoni, several social media platforms, and media outlets. According to PTI, they have requested that they refrain from producing, publishing, or spreading defamatory, false, and harmful allegations about them.
The defamation case against Dhoni will be heard on January 18 before a bench led by Justice Prathiba M. Singh. In their appeal, MSD’s former business partner has sought the court to prohibit him from hurting their reputation over the “false charges” allegedly made by MSD pertaining to putative unlawful earnings of 15 crore rupees and breach of a 2017 contract.
Dhoni had filed a lawsuit against Soumya Das and Diwakar, who are directors of ‘Aarka Sports’, a sports management company, in a lower court in Ranchi. According to MS Dhoni’s lawyer, Dayanand Singh, the two had approached MSD to build cricket academies in his name in India and in foreign countries. The 42-year-old was going to receive the full franchise fee, and the profits were going to be shared in a ratio of 70:30 between MSD and the husband-wife duo of Mihir Diwakar and Soumya Das. But later on, the two began setting up academies without letting Dhoni know and did not make any payments to him, the lawyer for MSD said.
The former cricketer had unsuccessfully served the two with legal notices. Dhoni’s lawyer informed the media and said, “On August 15, 2021, MS Dhoni withdrew his authority. They nonetheless went ahead and established academies in perhaps eight or ten different places.We twice sent them legal notice for breaking the terms of the agreement. They defrauded MS Dhoni of about ₹15 crore.
In accordance with Sections 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a criminal case was filed against Mihir and Soumya on the 27th of October last year. Simant Lohani recorded the former cricketer’s testimony in front of the first-class judicial magistrate court on Friday with Dhoni’s approval, according to PTI.
Mihir and Soumya were friends of MS Dhoni, and the former even played with the 42-year-old in India’s domestic competition, the Ranji Trophy.
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