The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Tuesday ordered 12 news outlets and independent journalists to take down allegedly defamatory content about industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Enterprises, citing a Delhi court order from September 6, The News Minute reported.
Among those who got notices to remove such content were news portals Newslaundry, The Wire and HW News, journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ajit Anjum and Ravish Kumar, satirist Akash Banerjee, and content creator Dhruv Rathee.
The ministry ordered 138 YouTube links and 83 Instagram posts to be removed. These included not just investigative reports, but also satirical videos and incidental mentions of the Adani Group.
Copies of the notice were also sent to Meta and Google, which own Instagram and YouTube.
The notice issued by the ministry cites the Delhi court order that temporarily restrained five journalists and three websites from publishing allegedly defamatory material about Adani Enterprises.
The journalists named in the order were Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi. The websites included in the order were paranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au.
Barring Guha Thakurta, none of the others who got the ministry’s notice on Tuesday were party to the proceedings before the Delhi court, The Telegraph reported.
Court order
The matter pertained to a defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises alleging that journalists, activists and organisations had damaged the company’s reputation and cost its stakeholders billions of dollars. Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of the Adani Group.
Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of the Rohini Courts had on September 6 passed an ex parte injunction in favour of the company, directing the defendants to expunge the material from their articles and social media posts. If expunging the content was not feasible, they must remove it within five days, the order said.
An ex parte order is one that is passed without hearing the other side in a legal dispute.
The court had clarified that it was not issuing a blanket order restraining the defendants from “fair, verified and substantiated” reporting and from hosting, storing or circulating such articles, posts or webpage links.
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