A court in Ahmedabad on Monday issued an ex parte injunction against The Wire, preventing the news website from publishing any content “directly or indirectly” about Jay Shah, the son of Bharatiya Janata Party National President Amit Shah, till the defamation suit he filed against the website is disposed of.
An injunction is a restraining order issued by a court after hearing the arguments of only one party, without giving the defendant any notice.
“It will be evident to anyone reading the Special Civil Suit that no single factual error has been substantively shown or pleaded against The Wire,” the website said in a press statement. “No case of untruth has been made out against The Wire...It goes without saying that this attempt to gag The Wire will not go unchallenged.”
On October 9, Jay Shah had filed a defamation case against the website, its senior editors, and a reporter for a article which noted that the revenues of his company, Temple Enterprise Pvt Ltd, had grown massively in 2015-’16, the year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. The article also mentioned that this spike in revenues came even as the company posted a loss of Rs 1.4 crore the same year. It also reported on loans received by Shah’s companies.
Amit Shah had defended his son and denied these allegations. “If you have evidence to prove your allegations, bring it to the court,” the BJP chief had said.
The injunction was issued after the Ahmedabad metropolitan court on Monday adjourned the hearing in the defamation case to October 26. This was the second time the hearing was rescheduled. On October 11, the court had adjourned the hearing to October 16 as Jay Shah’s advocate SV Raju was not present in the court then, citing work at the Gujarat High Court.
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