News website The Wire on Saturday filed a petition at the Gujarat High Court, seeking to have a criminal defamation suit against it struck down. The case is likely to come up for hearing on Monday, The Indian Express reported.
Businessman Jay Shah, who is Bharatiya Janata Party National President Amit Shah’s son, had filed the criminal defamation case against The Wire in October after it published a story in September, which said that the revenues of Jay Shah’s company had grown massively the year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
Journalist Rohini Singh, who wrote the article, and the website’s founding editors, public editor and managing editor – all accused in the case – filed the petition under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Editor Siddharth Varadarajan told Scroll.in.
In October, a court in Ahmedabad had issued an ex parte injunction against the news website, preventing it from publishing any content “directly or indirectly” about Jay Shah. The website had then moved the Gujarat High Court against this, and the court reserved its judgement.
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