Search the Internet          Tips

Maneka issues notice to
author of book on Indira

Maneka Gandhi has issued a legal notice to Katherine Frank, author of a book on Indira Gandhi for "scurrilous and defamatory" allegations against her and her late husband Sanjay Gandhi and sought damages amounting to "hundreds of thousands pounds".

"We issued the notice on Tuesday. You first give the notice and then you file the defamation suit. We will file it definitely," Maneka, Union Minister for Social Justice, said on Wednesday.

The defamation suit will be filed in the Queens Bench Division of the High Court of England within a week, it is learnt.

The main libel is against what she sees as suggestions in the 600-page book Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi that Sanjay was "involved in eliminating opponents or people he did not like" and that Maneka was involved in the cover-up of evidence concerning those murders, which according to the notice was completely untrue.

Another allegation in the book is that Indira was having an affair with her father's secretary M O Mathai and it was spread by Maneka. "Both are completely untrue," the notice said.

Describing the book as a "disgrace" to India, Maneka said that "every page there is something defamatory and untrue".

Maneka said, "I think it is a disgrace to India that this book should be allowed. And mine may be a small gesture (in deciding to file defamation suit). But it should be gone through. We are challenging the book and if there is money that comes from the defamation, it will go to charity."

Frank could not be reached for comments and for confirmation whether she had received the notice.

Media reports quoted the author as saying the critics of her work had focused purely on passages that concentrated on Gandhi's alleged romances.

"The only thing I did was to assess whether the rumours were credible," Frank said in published comments on the controversy over the book, portions of which portrayed Indira and Sanjay in not too good light.

Maneka said the author did not contact anybody, except one person "who tells untrue things", but whom she did not name.

"May be she does not tell anything at all and (the author) just makes it up. She then takes previous books written by people who have been discredited. In fact, one person's book was banned for telling lies. And then she rehashes this nonsense and adds unbelievable and unsupportable adjectives and comments to it," the minister said.

"Over the years I always kept quiet, no matter what lies have come out. But really this book was so over the top and my son Varun and I are so angry at the kind of lies put into this book, obviously we will go with small parts that are legally challengable," a hurt Maneka said.

Even the ones "I do not not challenge they are completely untrue and it is really very sad that Indira, who was prime minister should be called all sorts of names and the rest of the family, my husband, my brother-in-law (Rajiv Gandhi) and I, all of us, should be seen in this nonsensical light," she said.

Maneka said she has been a minister four times. "All of us had been in government. Surely if we were the kind of people that she (Frank) has portrayed us to be, the people of India would not take us so much to their heart."

She said Frank's book was equivalent of an Indian coming to England to write on Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, and writing a book without contacting any member of her family, friends or anyone who knows her but just looking into "scurrilous nonsense written about her including books challenged in courts and those which have been banned and then using them as text. What would the people of England say."

Referring to a description in the book that the corpse of her husband (after the plane crash) looked like an Indian Frankenstein's monster, Maneka said she found it shocking and disgraceful.

"We don't talk about the dead and not in this very hurtful and wrong fashion. Here is somebody who did not bother to meet a single person who knew my husband or knew me. And there is only one person in the book who is wonderful and everybody in the family is insane. It is quite obvious where the bias lies," she said.

Maneka is accompanied by Varun and Raj Panjwani, who fought and won her case against Khushwant Singh for a chapter in his autobiography.

Sarosh Zaiwalla, senior partner of the London-based Indian legal firm, Zaiwallas Solicitors, who has been chosen to handle the case, said, "We are confident of success."

You may also want to see
Pritish Nandy: Frankly, clueless

Tell us what you think of this report