Jay Shah Defamation Case: accused appear in Ahmedabad Metro Court

Ahmedabad:

The accused of the defamation case filed by BJP chief Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah over an article in news portal ‘The Wire’ here, including the author of the article Rohini Singh appeared in the metropolitan court here today.

The Metropolitan Court fixed March 17 as the next date of hearing.

Jay Shah had moved the metro court here on October 9 filing Rs 100 crore civil defamation case against the reporter, editors and the company over the article ‘The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah’, which claimed that his company Temple Enterprise Pvt Ltd’s turnover rose 16,000 times (from Rs 50000 to Rs 80 crores) in a few months time after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took charge of his office. He also filed a criminal defamation suit under IPC sections 500 (defamation), 109 (abetment), 39 ( cause an effect “volun­tarily ) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) against the author of the article Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth Bhatia and MK Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism. In his suit, he termed the article as “scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libelous and consisting of several defamatory statements.”

On the last date of hearing on January 9, a day after the rejection of the petition of online news portal ‘The Wire’ demanding quashing of the Rs 100 crore civil and related criminal defamation case by the Gujarat High Court, the metropolitan court here had issued summons to the 7 accused including the author to remain present before it on the next date of hearing on February 3 ie today.

DeshGujarat