The Ahmedabad metropolitan court – where Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah’s son had filed a criminal defamation case against news portal The Wire – on Monday adjourned the hearing to October 26, the website’s editor Siddharth Varadarajan said.
The hearing was adjourned as the Gujarat High Court had declared the day a holiday, The Wire’s editor said.
On October 9, Jay Shah had filed a defamation case against The Wire, its editor, and its reporter for an article that alleged that the revenues of his company had grown massively the year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
The hearing was first scheduled for October 11, but it was adjourned to October 16 as Jay Shah’s advocate SV Raju was not present in the court, citing work at the Gujarat High Court. He had sought additional time from the magistrate after which the court deferred the matter.
The article in The Wire had reported that the revenues of Jay Shah’s Temple Enterprise Pvt Ltd had grown from Rs 50,000 in 2014-’15 to Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-’16. It also reported a number of loans received by companies connected to Jay Shah, based on documents filed with the Registrar of Companies. Amit Shah has denied these allegations are true.
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