HC fines NSE which had filed defamation suit against website

The Bombay High Court today rejected the notice of motion taken out by National Stock Exchange (NSE) which had filed a Rs 100-crore defamation suit against online newsportal, Moneylife Foundation, for publishing allegedly false reports on algorithm (algo) trading mechanism on its platform.
Justice Gautam Patel also asked NSE to pay Rs 1.5 lakh each to Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu who run the portal.
The Judge also ordered NSE to pay another Rs 47 lakh as punitive damages to Tata Memorial Hospital and Masina Hospital in Mumbai towards charity.
In its notice of motion, NSE had said the story published on the portal was defamatory to them and be withdrawn.

However, after hearing both the parties, the HC ruled that NSE did not respond to queries sent to the bourse by the portal before publishing the story. Therefore, the stock exchange cannot say the story was defamatory, the judge said.
The HC also observed that NSE is fined since it was aware that no defamation was made out against the portal as the bourse had failed to respond to queries and yet it went ahead with filing the case thus wasting the time of the court.

NSE had said the report published on algo trading mechanism on its portal was not true.

When contacted, a spokesman of NSE confirmed the development but refused to comment.
The suit was filed by NSE on July 21.
NSE had said that since its inception, "the NSE has been maintaining a high degree of surveillance and integrity in its daily operations and strictly adheres to the rules, regulations and guidelines issued by the regulators from time to time."
Moneylife had claimed in the report that certain institutions registered for algo trading were allowed to profit illegally by NSE.