Twenty cases have been filed against journalists and media organisations.

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Defamation cases go beyond rafale…

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group created a stir in October when it filed a slew of defamation suits against media organisations, journalists and politicians for raising questions about the Rafale deal. It wasn“the largest defamation case in recent memory in the country”.

Court records show that since January 2018, four Anil Ambani-owned companies have filed 28 defamation suits in Ahmedabad courts. Eight cases are against politicians from Opposition parties, while 20 cases are against media organisations and journalists.

The defendants include international news outlets like Financial Times and Bloomberg, and a wide range of Indian publications like The Economic Times, The Financial Express, The Week, The Tribune, The Wire, and the news channel NDTV.

The cases go beyond the coverage of Rafale. Several of them relate to news reports on the sale of key telecom assets by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications to his brother Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio in December 2017.

Twenty six cases are civil suits in the Ahmedabad City and Civil Sessions Court, claiming damages under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

Two cases are criminal defamation suits in the Metropolitan Magistrate Court. One is against “Ajay Shukla”, presumably the journalist Ajai Shukla, under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code which prescribes punishment upto two years of imprisonment. The other is against “Mangalam Keshavn Venu”, presumably Mangalam Kesavan Venu, the founding editor of The Wire. The names of both the journalists also feature in civil suits against The Wire and have been correctly spelt there.

Of the civil suits, the one against NDTV appears to involve the highest amount of damages claimed – Rs 10,000 crore. The calculation that the damages claimed in 11 cases add up to Rs 65,000 crore. It  has been able to additionally confirm damages of Rs 15,500 crore in five other cases, which takes the amount of damages claimed in 16 cases to Rs 80,500 crore.

Reliance Defence, Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Aerostructure filed a case on October 11 against NDTV Limited, founder Prannoy Roy and managing editor Sreenivasan Jain In a statement, NDTV said the defamation suit seeking Rs 10,000 crore damages was filed against the weekly show, Truth vs Hype, which featured a discussion on the Rafale deal on September 29. NDTV claimed “top executives of Reliance ignored repeated, multiple and written requests to appear on the show”. Rejecting the defamation charges, NDTV described the suit as “a heavy-handed attempt by Anil Ambani’s group to suppress the facts and prevent the media from doing its job.

 

THE WIRE CASE

The Wire has three cases registered against it. The first case was filed on February 16 by Reliance Communications and Reliance Infrastructure against MK Venu, one of the three founding editors of the website, manager Radhakrishna Muralidhar and the Foundation for Independent Journalism, the non-profit that publishes the website.

The second case was filed on September 24 by Reliance Infrastructure, Reliance Defence and Reliance Aerostructure against columnist Ajai Shukla, founding editors Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth Bhatia and MK Venu, along with Muralidhar and the Foundation of Independent Journalism. Shukla is a columnist of the Business Standard.

The third case was filed the same day by Reliance Naval and Engineering against journalist Ravi Nair, Muralidhar, Venu, Varadarajan, Foundation of Independent Journalism. Nair is an independent journalist who has written about the Rafale deal for The Wire.

In the legal notice for the video, the Reliance Group threatened to sue The Wire for Rs 6,000 crore.

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