The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday granted bail to the managing editor of a Noida-based news channel that aired alleged defamatory content about Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath last month, PTI reported.
Anuj Shukla, an editor at Nation Live channel, got bail in a case of fraud and forgery. He was arrested along with his colleague Anshul Kaushik and the channel’s head Ishita Singh last month after the content about Adityanath was broadcast. The three were arrested for the alleged defamatory content and for running the channel illegally. Shukla and Kaushik were lodged at Luksar jail in Gautam Buddh Nagar district.
Last week, the court had granted Kaushik bail. Ishita Singh’s bail application is yet to be taken up by the court. Two first information reports have been registered at the Phase 3 police station in Noida against her.
“Anshul and Anuj had moved the Allahabad High Court to seek relief in the other case, after all three were granted bail by a local court in the defamation case,” Shukla’s lawyer Nitin Gupta said. “Today, the Allahabad High Court heard Shukla’s plea and granted him bail in the fraud and forgery case.”
Gupta said Shukla was only an employee of the channel and had joined in April. “It was not his domain of work to find out if the news channel was working under an unregistered name,” the lawyer added. “Justice Singh had granted bail to Kaushik on similar grounds.”
However, the lawyer said that bail orders were yet to be signed by the judge, and they have to be produced in a lower court before the two journalists can get out of jail. They were granted bail in the defamation case on June 20 by the District and Sessions Court in Surajpur in Greater Noida.
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