Bombay HC admits defamation suit against Sunita Narain's magazine

The Bombay High Court has admitted a defamation suit against "Down to Earth" magazine, edited by noted environmentalist Sunita Narain, asking it to remove an allegedly defamatory sentence in its report against Mumbai-based agrochemical company UPL, the company said on Monday.

"My client has been requesting Sunita Narain to delete her controversial article since 1995. Despite publishing an erratum, she failed to take the article off her website," company advocate Hiranya Pandey said in a statement issued by UPL, earlier called the United Phosphorous Ltd.

A sentence in a report published in the magazine in 1995 had said that UPL was owned by the "brother of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim."

Challenged by the company, the magazine had hyper-linked a retraction saying that on further investigation, it found the allegation to be untrue, but left the original sentence standing.

The company said in the statement that it decided "to take Sunita Narain to court after it lost a major business contract in January 2015 after the client showed concerns over its alleged relationship with notorious criminal Dawood Ibrahim".

The court will take up the case for final hearing and disposal on April 6.