Jay Shah doesn't appear in court, case against Wire adjourned

An Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court on Monday adjourned to December 16 hearing in a criminal defamation case filed by BJP President Amit Shah's son Jay Shah against news portal The Wire after Jay Shah failed to appear in the court.

The suit was filed after a report in The Wire claiming that the turnover of Jay Shah's firm grew exponentially after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the country in 2014.

The Wire team reached the Ahmedabad court on time and Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of the portal, tweeted a picture of the team outside the court, stating the accused were smiling while the complainant gave the court a miss.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S.K. Gadhvi had issued summons to journalist Rohini Singh, five editors and the non-profit company that publishes The Wire.

The summons were issued after the Metropolitan Court prima facie found that a case of defamation punishable with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years with or without fine was made out against all the seven respondents.

The case had been filed under IPC sections 500 (defamation), 109 (abetment), 39 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).

The hearing was earlier adjourned on October 11 after Jay Shah's lawyer failed to appear in court, pleading that he was busy in a case in the Gujarat High Court.

Then again, it was adjourned on October 17 till October 26 because the court went on a Diwali break.

The court had last month prevented the news portal from carrying any more articles on Jay Shah's business after the BJP chief's son filed the case.

In his application, Jay Shah had prayed for "criminal action against the respondents for defaming and tarnishing the reputation of the complainant through an article, which is scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libelous and consisting of several defamatory statements".

--IANS

desai/mr