New Delhi: A Delhi court on Saturday issued a fresh bailable warrant against YouTuber Dhruv Rathee in an eight-year-old criminal defamation case filed by Vikas Pandey. The Saket Court directed that the new warrant be issued at Rathee's Gurugram address, news agency IANS reported. Judicial Magistrate First Class Rahul Jain passed the order in the complaint, registered as Ct. Cases 5786/2018, filed by Vikas Sankrityayan, also known as Vikas Pandey.

Source: IANS via HiIndia

The court had issued a bailable warrant against Rathee on October 17, after it was informed that summons issued to him could not be served because the premises of his residence were found locked. That October 17 warrant also could not be served, as the court observed it had been issued to an incorrect address in Austria. On Saturday, the Saket Court was informed that Rathee had already left India. The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for November 23.

Source: IANS via HiIndia

According to LawBeat's account of the proceedings, Rathee was first summoned by an order dated July 23, 2019, and on October 12, 2026 the court directed fresh summons at an address in Sector 56, Gurugram, allowing the complainant to accompany the process server. The complaint relates to Rathee's May 2018 video titled 'BJP IT Cell Part 2'. Pandey, the founder of the social media page 'I Support Narendra Modi', alleges the video defamed him; the complaint alleges the video claimed he was the second-in-command of the BJP IT cell and had offered Rs 50 lakh to a man named Mahavir Prasad to retract allegations against the party's IT cell. These are allegations in a pending complaint and have not been established by any court.

Source: LawBeat

The video was also retweeted in 2018 by Aam Aadmi Party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, who later acknowledged before the Supreme Court that sharing it was a mistake, IANS reported. India Legal Live noted that the Delhi High Court had earlier upheld the summoning order in the case, observing that retweeting allegedly defamatory content could attract prosecution under Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code.

Source: India Legal Live

Whether the fresh warrant can be served at the Gurugram address before the November 23 hearing will decide the next step in proceedings that have been pending since 2019, with the complainant arguing that Rathee's continued absence from India has delayed the case.