Dalmia Strikes Back
International Cricket Council chief Jagmohan Dalmia yesterday filed separate defamation suits against The Sunday Telegraph of the UK and weekly magazines India Today and Outlook in Calcutta High Court. He has sought damages of Rs 50 crore each from the three publications.
Justice R K Mitra restrained The Sunday Telegraph from printing or publishing any news item related to the match-fixing scam involving Dalmia.
In the suits against India Today and Outlook, the court directed Dalmia to give notices to the parties. The court observed that in the presence of all the parties, the it would consider passing an interim order against the weeklies.
However, the judge passed an order against the UK paper as Dalmia's UK-based solicitors had served a notice on it, saying that Dalmia might sue the publication either in the UK or in India.
Dalmia's counsel Sidharth Sankar Ray, while moving the petition against the Sunday paper, stated that on April 30, it published two reports_President of the ICC under the corruption spotlight and The great ICC whitewash. The newspaper was circulated in Calcutta also.
The counsel argued that by falsely and maliciously publishing those reports, the newspaper made defamatory aspersions on Dalmia. And this affected Dalmia's social image. The reports would cause serious prejudice and damage to his reputation, character, credit and goodwill, he said.
It was further stated by the counsel that in the two articles "it has been imputed and meant and or intended to mean and or understood to have meant that your petitioner (Dalmia) is dishonest untrustworthy and indulged in malpractice, corruption and is having undue allegiance so as to make undue and illegal and wrongful profit taking advantage of his position of being the president of ICC and further that your petitioner has caused loss and prejudice to national interest."
Dalmia. in his petition, accused the newspaper authority of malafide motive of maligning him with false news items. Justice Mitra fixed the case for further hearing on June 12.
International Cricket Council Chief Jagmohan Dalmia filed three separate defamation suits against The Sunday Telegraph of the UK and weeklies India Today and Out Look in the Calcutta High Court and sought a decree of Rs 50 crores each against them.
Justice R K Mitra yesterday restrained The Sunday Telegraph from printing or publishing any news items relating to recent Cricket match fixing scam involbing Dalmia.
In the suits filed against India Today and Out look, the court directed Dalmia to give notice to the parties . The court observed that inpresent of the all the parties, the court will consider passing of interim order against India Today and Out Look.
However, the court passed the order against the foreign newspaper as Dalmia's U K based solicitors had given notice to the company that Dalmia may sue the media either in Uk or India.
Sidharth Sankar Ray, counsel for Dalmia while moving petition against the U K based news paper, stated that on April 30, 2000 the news paper published two news items in the heading of " President of the ICC under the corruption spotlight " and "The great ICC whitewash ". The newspaper was circulated in the city of Calcutta.
It was argued that by falsely and maliciously printing and publishing of those news items , the news papar authirity made false and defatory aspersions against Dalmia directly and by such news image of Dalmia affected adversly in the eyes of thinking members of the Society.The news items would cause serious prejudice and damage the reputation , character, credit and goodwill of Dalmia.