Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s officer on special duty, Rajbir Singh Ghuman, has sent a notice to several media platforms and tech intermediaries to take down alleged defamatory content against him.

The matter pertains to reports about the Enforcement Directorate’s purported letter to the Punjab DGP that alleged Rajbir Singh Ghuman was involved in influencing transfers and postings of government officials, leaking confidential government documents, facilitating arms licences and securing government approvals in lieu of alleged monetary and other benefits.

According to reports, the said letter stemmed from a money laundering investigation linked to the submission of alleged fake consent letters for obtaining change of land use in a case involving a housing society.

The notice, filed through advocate Sangam Garg, said that a series of material alleged that Ghuman “controls, operates, facilitates, or benefits from a corrupt ‘transfer-posting network’, ‘nexus’, or ‘racket’ within the government of Punjab and is complicit in corrupt practices”.

Among the outlets named in the notice are Hindustan Times, The Print, ABP Sanjha, and PTC News, apart from Google, Meta and X.

The notice terms the news reports as “false, baseless, reckless, motivated and malicious” and says that “no fair or meaningful attempt” was made to verify the allegations from Ghuman or with any competent official source.  

Apart from retraction of the said defamatory content, the notice said it constituted a formal complaint and grievance under the IT Rules 2021. It also called on all the noticees to preserve all relevant electronic and physical evidence relating to the impugned content.

The notice states that “failure, refusal, evasion or incomplete compliance within the applicable period shall leave my client with no alternative but to initiate, without further correspondence, all appropriate civil, criminal, statutory and regulatory proceedings against the defaultee noticee or notices”.

Ghuman earlier sent a notice to SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia over similar allegations.

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