A British caver who helped to rescue 12 boys who were stranded at a Thai cave may take legal action against Tesla CEO, Elon Musk after the entrepreneur called him a 'pedo' (paedophile) in comments. Following which, the shares of the company tumbled as much as 3.6 percent, taking its valuation to $52.2 billion, as per Bloomberg report. Tesla has lost $2 billion because of Musk's derogatory comment. Even though Musk later deleted the tweets, but the damage was already done because by then it had already reached his 22 million followers.

Reportedly, Musk attacked the diver Vern Unsworth without providing any justification or explanation, after the cave expert slammed his offer of a miniature submarine to extract the footballers from the Tham Luang cave as a “PR stunt”.

Vern Unsworth was one of the vital members of the rescue team that was involved in getting all the 13 boys out. The diver spoke elaborately in an interview to the CNN and had called Musk's custom-made submarine a PR stunt. While talking about it he was quoted, "He can stick his submarine where it hurts," he said. "It just had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like. " He even went on to say that Musk was asked to leave quickly from the sight and there were already reports about his invention being 'un practical.'

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 17, 2018 05:03 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).