The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday rejected a petition by The Wire that challenged a gag order passed by a lower court in a civil defamation case filed by BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah over an article published by the news portal.
Justice Paresh Upadhyay asked the petitioners, including the author of the article, Rohini Singh, and founding editors of the portal, to move the trial court to challenge the gag order.
The High Court also directed the trial court to decide the matter within 30 days.
“These appeals arising from an ex-parte ad-interim impugned order of the trial court are not entertained. It would be open to the defendants to file their counter to the suit, or at least to the application for interim injunction before the trial court, if they so choose,” the High Court said.
“The trial court is directed to finally decide the injunction within 30 days from today, after hearing both the sides,” it said adding that if any of the parties felt aggrieved by the final order that may be passed by the trial court on the injunction application, it would be open to him tor her to challenge it before an appropriate forum in accordance with law.
The petitioners wanted the interim order of the trial court quashed and set aside as it was passed without issuing notices to the defendants, and claimed that the facts did not warrant an ex-parte order.
They submitted that the trial court had not considered any of the “parameters like prima facie case, balance of convenience, irreparable loss” before passing the order and hence, it was unsustainable.
Last month, the Ahmedabad court issued an ex-parte injunction against the portal, prohibiting it from publishing, broadcasting or printing “in any manner” programmes in any language on the basis of the article published by the website about Mr. Jay Shah “directly or indirectly” till the defamation suit has been disposed of.
Mr. Jay Shah submitted before the High Court that the appeal against the ex-parte interim order was not maintainable and deserves to be dismissed. He also said the applicant had not given any justification for the plea.
The petition was filed challenging the injunction ordered by the civil court on October 12 on the story carried by The Wire titled ‘The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah’.
The lower court had issued the order against the news portal in response to a civil defamation suit of ₹. 100 crore filed by Mr. Jay Shah against the reporters, editors and the company over the article which claimed that his firm’s turnover rose 16,000 times in one year after the NDA came to power.
Triggers political furore
It triggered a political furore, with the Congress demanding an inquiry into the matter and the BJP terming it “slanderous“.
Mr. Jay Shah also filed a criminal defamation suit against Ms. Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth Bhatia and M.K .Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism.
In his suit, he termed the article “scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libellous and consisting of several defamatory statements.” .
