Price of bad review: How big companies ‘weaponise’ defamation to silence online dissent

Since then, the Kalras have waged a legal battle on two fronts: defending the defamation suit in the high court and pursuing a consumer complaint in a district forum. They have spent approximately Rs 5 lakh on legal fees, a sum crowd-funded largely by Kalra’s professors and friends.

“The stigma of this case follows me everywhere,” Kalra tells The Indian Express. “I’m scared to write anything on social media now. My mother is constantly worried about our financial security.”

Kalra’s ordeal exemplifies one of many cases in which powerful corporations use defamation law to target individual consumers for airing grievances online, with legal experts believing this is intended to intimidate consumers into silence rather than win damages. These legal actions — steered by large law firms that assess the alleged “damage” caused by an online review or complaint to be worth large sums — often drag on for years, leaving consumers financially and emotionally exhausted.

Another young Delhiite, Vatsal Mishra, finds himself in a similar predicament. In 2024, the 27-year-old marketing professional posted on X and Instagram that a motorcycle manufacturer was not addressing his complaints about the performance and maintenance of a bike he had recently purchased. In his posts, he described persistent mechanical issues and cautioned the company that he would “take this in court”, urging other users to share his post.

The motorcycle manufacturer responded with a Rs 5 lakh defamation suit in Pune. “I was shocked. This was so unexpected and scary,” Mishra says.

Since then, he has moved a consumer complaint against the company in a Delhi court. But the Pune case still drags on. In May last year, the Pune civil court granted a temporary injunction in favour of the company, restraining Mishra from “insinuating the alleged reputation, defaming and tarnishing the goodwill of the [company]”.

The litigations have together cost him Rs 1 lakh already, but so far, he has refused to delete the posts. “The videos contain only facts, nothing abusive or personal. I refuse to publish an apology online for something that is not wrong,” he says.

In Mumbai, six defamation cases — four civil and two criminal — filed by a major hospitality company have been pending since 2021. In one such case, the company filed a Rs 99-lakh lawsuit against a 59-year-old Dehradun-based hotelier, Shailendra Tyagi, over a series of Facebook comments and posts between December 2020 and September 2021, accusing the company of “misleading” and “cheating” its customers. Here too, the company sought — and was granted— a temporary injunction, which Tyagi describes as a gag order.

For Tyagi, a former physical education teacher, the case has begun to take a toll — not only has it cost him Rs 5 lakh, but it has also allegedly led to hypertension — and all he wants now is for it to end. “Even if the decision is against me, I’m ready to go to jail if I’m proven wrong. But the court can’t just keep us hanging,” he says.

Even lawyers are not immune. Brigadier Vivek Chhatre (Retd), a 64-year-old Pune-based advocate who has been providing legal counsel to Tyagi and five others in the Mumbai proceedings, was sued by the same hospitality company in 2023 over four news videos featuring him and an online petition, in which accused the company of “cheating” and “hiding facts” from its customers. He had also filed complaints against the company with the Central Consumer Protection Authority, the National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the Ministry of Tourism.

In response, the company secured court orders asking him to take down these posts and restraining him from making any statements against it.

“First these companies seek an injunction. When they get it, they file frivolous applications alleging a breach of that injunction,” Chhatre explains. “Such proceedings are elongated simply to exhaust the person.”

Another victim of such lawsuits was journalist Krishnaraj Rao, 60. In a series of videos, Rao highlighted alleged deceptive business practices by a real estate developer, even including the company’s rebuttals in his posts.

Since the lawsuit was filed in 2021, Rao has relied on crowd funding for his defence. “So much of my time has been wasted just appearing before the court,” he says.

Chilling effect

The strategy of entangling consumers in prolonged litigation appears to be working, with lawyers warning that it risks creating a “chilling effect”, discouraging consumers to air even legitimate grievances.

“Defamation law in India is generally misused by the stronger party against the weaker side,” says Sushila, associate professor at National Law University, Delhi.

Ashok R Patil, vice-chancellor at the National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi, concurs, describing such lawsuits as a tactic to force consumers into silence.

Despite this, there are instances of courts protecting consumer rights, as illustrated by two recent high court judgments. The first came in February last year, when the Delhi High Court rejected a defamation plaint filed by Addictive Learning Technology Limited, which runs the ed-tech platform LawSikho, against three individuals who had questioned the platform’s claims in an exchange with its founder on social media.

The court dismissed the suit at the outset, observing that X was a “casual conversational medium” where users do not necessarily treat every post as verified fact, and that for a claim of defamation to stick, there must be proof of “substantial injury to reputation”, not just “hurt feelings” or a “potential” loss of business.

The Madras High Court made a similar ruling in March 2023 in a case involving a lawyer’s criminal defamation complaint against a former client who had left a poor online review. The court quashed the proceedings, stating that the internet was a free platform for expression and that expressions of dissatisfaction — even if harsh — do not amount to defamation.

Ashish Goel, a constitutional and tax lawyer who was a defendant in the first case, says that while he was not perturbed by the lawsuit, it could still be emotionally and financially draining for a layperson.

“For someone without legal knowledge or money, facing a defamation case for large sums can be daunting,” he says.

Lawyers believe that while companies have the right to sue, courts must first protect consumers. “Such suits strangle consumer rights and the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression,” says Vipul Shukla, a Delhi-based lawyer with experience in consumer law matters.