At any rate, Mantri, either wilfully or out of ignorance, thought it fit to make such a remark, and his many online fellow-travellers ensured his bilge ricocheted around Twitter-sphere. He posted the tweets in December 2017, but they came to my attention only last month when R Jagannathan, the editor of Swarajya magazine, retweeted them.

As a journalist, I am well aware of the importance of freedom of speech. Every day I face a stream of bile on social media which I ignore.

But free speech does not mean you can defame a man who is no longer alive.

The legal response was a reaction – a rarer than rare reaction – to a gratuitously terrible comment, from a platform of some influence. Contrary to Mantri’s protestations after being served the notice that he is an 'ordinary citizen,' he is the founder of a venture capital firm, writes for leading publications, and has a sizeable Twitter following (including the Prime Minister).

Hence the decision, by my brother and I, to not let Mantri’s tweets go unchallenged. Hence the notice, asking him to delete the tweets and issue a public apology, or face legal action.

Another reason for this piece was to address the discussion that has been revived around the lingering question of whether my father went against the Indian government's stand.