Jay Shah defamation case: SC asks Gujarat court not to initiate proceedings against The Wire, journalist till 12 April

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Gujarat Magistrate Court notto  initiate criminal defamation proceedings against the news portal The Wire and the journalist till 12 April in the Jay Shah defamation case. The apex court also asked Jay Shah and other who filed the case against The Wire to file their responses within two weeks to the journalists’ plea. The three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra observed that the press should be more responsible before publishing. “We are not gagging press but sometimes journalists write things that amount to sheer contempt of court,” he said, adding that the media cannot write whatever it feels about anyone. [caption id=“attachment_4385405” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of the Supreme Court. PTI[/caption] In February, the Gujarat court had restored the gag order against   The Wire , thereby debarring it from publishing any article related to the businesses of BJP chief Amit Shah’s son Jay. The lower court is hearing a civil defamation suit worth Rs 100 crore filed by Jay Shah against the reporters, editors and the company (The Wire) over the article that claimed that his company’s turnover rose 16,000 times in one year after the NDA came to power. The article claimed that the company saw a huge rise in its turnover after the BJP came to power in 2014, and its revenue rose from Rs 50,000 to over Rs 80 crore in one year. Jay Shah also filed a criminal defamation suit against the author of the article Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth Bhatia and MK Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism. In his suit, Shah termed the article as “scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libellous and consisting of several defamatory statements.” With inputs from PTI