WhiteHat Jr CEO and founder Karan Bajaj has filed a defamation case against Bengaluru based Software Engineer Pradeep Poonia and served on him a notice of damages to the tune of $2.6 million or Rupees 192,836,700 (approx.). Pradeep Poonia has been restrained from downloading any curriculum which is available from its users from WhiteHat Jr and circulating it to third parties. Apart from that, Pradeep Poonia has been restrained from commenting or sharing his views and experiences on the number or quality of teachers of WhiteHat Jr and from commenting or exposing their educational or professional backgrounds.
Karan Bajaj has alleged Pradeep Poonia of infringement of trademarks and copyrights, the onslaught of privacy of WhiteHat Jr, defamation, mischief, and torts inducing breach of the contractual terms and conditions of the platform. This ensued after Poonia released a series of tweets earlier in the month of October and shared internal Slack chats from WhiteHat Jr. After that Pradeep Poonia spoke about being harassed by the company WhiteHat Jr and said that the posts and videos which he would put up would to show to the public that the company is not providing quality education and is frequently subject to takedown notices and copyright claims. In addition to his tweets, Pradeep Poonia also talked about the teachers at WhiteHat Jr not having sufficient knowledge of coding.
The defamation suit filed by the founder of WhiteHatjr Mr. Karan Bajaj was around 800 pages. Bajaj accused Poonia of launching a systemic and highly defamatory attack since the month of September 2020. Karan Bajaj has also made a number of allegations of illegal acts against Pradeep Poonia which include
- Hacking into the internal communications platform of the company WhiteHat Jr and gaining access to its confidential employee communications of the company, including those with parents or its customers, and putting them up in the public domain.
- To teach and ready a minor to attend the classes on the platform WhiteHat Jr with the object of harassing the teachers of the WhiteHat Jr as well as recording the video of the classes without the prior consent or permission.
- Publicly bragging about shutting down the business of the company WhiteHatJr.
- Showing publicly, the information of private employees of the company WhiteHat Jr including their mobile numbers and hacking into the system of the company.
WhiteHat Jr filed another suit of defamation of $1.9 million against Aniruddha Malpani. Mr. Aniruddha Malpani, an angel investor in several Edtech start-ups. After hearing this case, and arguments of both sides the Hon'ble High Court of Delhi had granted an ad-interim injunction restraining Mr. Malpani from posting, publishing, content against WhiteHat Jr and its employees. The Hon'ble High Court of Delhi also directed Anuruddha Malpani to delete all defamatory tweets which he had made against the platform.
In the court, the council in support of WhiteHat Jr underscored that the company is very supportive of the students and the number of customers who are using the platform.
