News

SOE takes legal action against Shailendra Raju

September 17, 2018 6:49 pm

Elections Supervisor Mohammed Saneem is suing a self-exiled, social media troll residing in New Zealand for $1million for allegedly defaming him and his family on Facebook.

Saneem is suing Shailendra Raju, a well-known anti Fiji government, former Fiji resident, who now has deactivated his Facebook account which has been used as a platform to cast a whole host of serious allegations against many prominent Fijians.

Elections Supervisor says he’s taking further actions.

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“Couple of weeks ago, Raju made some posts on Facebook which had material on it, that was not correct and was defamatory, mostly attacking my upbringing and also various other allegations regarding my family. I decided to take the legal avenue that was available to me and I am taking a legal action on him for defamation.”

Raj is a former political aid of Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour Party and Laisenia Qarase’s SDL party.

The two former Prime Ministers were asked by FBC news to comment on Raju’s character, but both decided not to say anything in his defense.

Raju was served a defamation notice at his Pulse Energy office at around 3pm on August 29th in Mt Eden, Auckland by a private investigator who took a photo of him as he served the notice.

“He has to be served with the notice which we complied with. We issued him a notice requiring him to issue an apology as well as to remove the post. The post was removed by fb and he did not comply with the notice, therefore the next step is to issue summon which we have done now and we will be serving him in NZ in due course.”

Raju replied to FBC news queries saying he will defend himself but has not commented about why he has now deactivated his account.

He was also Sitiveni’s Rabuka organizer and chaperone during Rabuka’s recent campaign visit to New Zealand.

Meanwhile, Saneem seems determined to take this issue all the way.

“He has no right to question my upbringing or the livelihood of my father and our relations with the place, the people that we’ve lived with. That’s plain slander and he will be taken to task for this.”

Raju says he is yet to appoint a lawyer because former Labour party member and lawyer Anand Singh has declined to represent him.

The writ of summons is expected to be served on Shailendra Raju this week.