IIPM, a Management Institute run by Mr Arindham Chaudhary has slapped legal notice claiming Rs 125 crores as damages including threat of arrest on a Mumbai Blogger Mr. Gaurav Sabnis in relation to some defamatory posts made by later on his blog at http://gauravsabnis.blogspot.com, which lead to his voluntary resignation from IBM.

The language of the notice is to harsh to scare an ordinary person. And talks about logging technical details of posts, reporting to police, issue of warrants, etc. But all the proceedings will be withdrawn, if the specified steps are taken that included removal of posts, removing the links, issuing a apology and refraining from any such post in the future.

But the matter does not end here, the blogger's employer IBM was threatened that in case the posts were not deleted the IBM Laptops will be burnt in front of IBM office, which lead to his resignation, though he was never pressurized by his employers. Though Mr Gaurav maintains his stand and talks about his freedom of speech and he talks about al this at his Blog.

Similar Cases:

Last week, Singapore court sentenced two bloggers for making racist remarks online against minority community. And in March, similar thing happened when Times of India slapped a legal notice on some blogger. Blogging has come a long way and has evolved into a place where we can express our opinion freely but sometimes we vent out frustrations, which may hurt the sentiments of the society. In this regard, bloggers need to be careful and deter from making any defamatory posts.

But companies also need to remember, there is no defamation, if the things expressed are proved to be true i.e. the defence available under Law of Torts.