Who's Indian American Randeep Hothi And Why Did He Sue Elon Musk?

In a shocking twist, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk faced a lawsuit. An Indian American graduate student Randeep Hothi filed a defamation lawsuit against Musk. This is not the first time that Musk was targeted by Hothi.

Randeep Hothi is an Indian-American man who completed his graduation studies. He is a doctoral candidate in Asian languages and cultures at the University of Michigan. He also studies Sikh Diaspora and constantly keeps critiquing Tesla.

His twitter bio reads, “Investigating/Reporting on corporate fraud. Currently focusing on Tesla. DMs open for fellow travelers, reporters, whistleblowers, etc.” He once again targeted Tesla and Elon Musk.

There is a group called TSLAQ in which ex Tesla employees and Hothi are members. These members often take a dig at Tesla and openly target Elon Musk. Often these people use online aliases and do not reveal their real name while tweeting. Even Hothi does that.

Hothi used ‘@skabooshka’ to make posts slandering Tesla. Unfortunately his identity was revealed. Both Hothi and his brother were then identified in public in 2018. When Musk got to know that Hothi’s brother works for Volkswagen, he tweeted about this to the company. After facing attacks from several people on an online platform, Hothi slammed Elon Musk on Twitter. “This is my promise. Tesla is a zero. Elon Musk will go to prison,” he posted.

The members of TSLAQ group formed it in order to criticize Musk and his company Tesla. Back in February 2019, things became serious. Hothi got angry as he was not allowed to enter Tesla's Fremont sales centre in California. When he tried to enter the office for research purposes, the security guards stopped him.

Later in April 2019, he claimed that a Tesla car was following him around. He posted a picture of a Tesla car on his social media and alleged that the car was following him. Elon Musk responded to this allegation and said that Hothi was cooking up stories.

LAWSUIT AGAINST TESLA

In August, Hothi filed a defamation case against Musk. He claimed that because of Musk, Hothi and his brother’s identities were revealed and they received hate from people online. In 2019, after Musk tagged Volkswagen in a tweet asking how Hothi brothers and the company are related, twitter became a warzone. Hothi and his brother received a lot of criticism and were targets of racial abuse.

Following this, he filed a lawsuit against Musk. The case was heard in Alameda County Superior Court where California state judge Julia Spain spoke in Hothi’s favor. She said that Hothi had power in his case. She further dismissed Musk’s claims of the lawsuit being baseless. Therefore, Randeep Hothi won this time. There might be further turns in this case.