Adani Loses Defamation Case Against The Wire & Economic And Political Weekly

Mangalore Today News Network

Jan 03, 2018: Victory ensued for the online news portal The Wire and Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) as a Gujarat court has rejected the lawsuit filed by industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Group against Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, three other journalists, and The Wire for an article published against the Adani Group.

 

The Wire republished EPW’s article hence, was dragged to court along with Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, the then-Editor-in-Chief of EPW. The court only ordered a sentence and an adverb to be removed from the 3500-word article. 

The article titled “Modi Government’s Rs 500-Crore Bonanza to the Adani Group” was published by EPW on June 17 and was later reproduced by The Wire on June 19. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Abir Dasgupta, Advait Rao Palepu and Shinzani Jain were the authors of the article when it was published.

In the December 16 order, the Principal Senior Civil Judge Jaiminkumar R Pandit Bhuj-Kacch asked for the following line to be removed. “The High Court was misled and wrongly recorded the customs duty on electricity from the SEZ to DTA will not be maintainable as this will lead to double taxation.” He also asked for the removal of the word “surprisingly” used in the same paragraph.

The current order came as the judge noticed there was not enough verifiable evidence supporting these claims. 

The court also observed that the article was written after a questionnaire was sent to the Adani Group before it was published. The article was written based on the material available. Hence the article “cannot be said to be defamatory”, and hence “there is no prima facie case.”



Courtesy:thelogicalindian.com