A Delhi court on Thursday quashed an order that had asked four journalists to take down allegedly defamatory content against Adani Enterprises, emphasising that the gag had been issued without hearing the appellants.
However, the relief will not apply to a fifth journalist similarly muzzled — the veteran Paranjoy Guha Thakurta — because another court reserved its order on his appeal against the same gag order.
Journalists Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi had filed a joint appeal challenging a senior civil judge’s September 6 interim gag order. District judge Ashish Aggarwal heard their appeal at the Rohini Court.
Guha Thakurta had filed a separate appeal, which was heard by district judge Sunil Chaudhary at the same court complex.
Judge Aggarwal sent the matter back to the senior civil judge to consider and decide it afresh after hearing both sides.
“In my opinion, the civil judge ought to have granted (the four journalists) that opportunity (to be heard) before passing an order which had the impact of prima facie declaring (the) articles are defamatory and even directing their removal,” he said.
“The effect would be (that) in the event of the court of a senior civil judge subsequently finding that the articles are not defamatory, after defendants put forth their defence, it is not feasible that articles which have been removed would then be restored….”
Aggarwal also noted that the articles and posts alleged to have been defamatory had been in the public domain for a long time.
Advocates Vrinda Grover and Nakul Gandhi represented the four journalists.
During the hearing, the court asked the Adanis’ counsel, Vijay Aggarwal, about the reason for the hurry to secure an interim gag order.
The counsel replied that all these journalists were writing articles that maliciously targeted group companies, and that a podcast made on a similar vein had been shared and liked on social media.
The company’s lawyers also submitted that the National Investigation Agency was probing the journalists, but failed to sway the court.
Judge Chaudhary reserved his order on Guha Thakurta’s appeal after hearing arguments for almost two hours and posing many questions to both sides.
He asked Adani Enterprises why it had filed the original suit in the Rohini Court. The company’s counsel said the defamation had been committed online and someone from this court’s jurisdictional area had informed the group after reading the stuff on the Internet.
Chaudhary also asked what harm the articles had caused to the company. The Adani Enterprises counsel said the journalists had from time to time published articles tarnishing the company’s image. In one of the articles, he said, they had claimed that the Centre had altered norms to favour the company.
Senior advocate Trideep Pais, representing Guha Thakurta, argued that the civil judge had not cited any findings and had, without any reasoning, declared that a prima facie case had been made out that the articles were defamatory.