Elon Musk vs Randeep Hothi: Who is Indian-American Student Suing Tesla for Defamation and Winning? FOLLOW US ON: In a case that will go down in history as a first, an Indian-American student has Randeep Hothi managed to win round one of his legal battles with millionaire Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO was recently unable to stay a defamation lawsuit filed by Hothi, an ardent critic of Tesla, against Musk after a California judge dismissed his pleas that the case was baseless and an attempt to silence the millionaire's free speech, Bloomberg reported. Who is Randeep Hothi? Randeep Hothi is a former student of the University of California in Berkeley and currently a doctoral candidate in Asian languages at the University of Michigan. Hothi is also a vocal critic of Tesla. The graduate student who tweets under the Twitter handle of 'skabooshka', describes himself as "Investigating/Reporting on corporate fraud," in his Twitter bio. He also says that he is "Currently focusing on Tesla". Hothi is known to be part of a global anonymous group of Tesla critics who are collectively called '$TSLAQ'. The group consists of former Tesla employees and graduate students like Hothi, many of whom often take to social media and other platforms to criticise Tesla and Musk. His parents live in Fremont, the city where Tesla's auto plant is located. Though other $TSLAQ members post under anonymous pseudonyms, Hothi and his brother's identity was revealed to the world by another anon Twitter handle that has since remained inactive. Hothi's brother worked at Volkswagon but has since stopped working with the Tesla rival.