Jay Shah's defamation hearing against The Wire adjourned till 26 Oct as court goes on Diwali break

A metropolitan court on Monday adjourned the hearing of the criminal defamation case filed by BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay against news portal The Wire until 26 October.

FYI: Jay Shah's criminal defamation case against The Wire got adjourned to Oct 26. It is learnt that today was declared a holiday by HC.

— Siddharth (@svaradarajan) October 16, 2017

This was the second adjournment in the high-profile case after Shah’s lawyer failed to appear in court at the first hearing on 11 October.

The hearing was previously adjourned  after  Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate SK Gadhvi was told that Shah’s lawyer—senior advocate SV Raju—could not appear as he was busy in the high court.

Jay Shah filed a criminal defamation case in the metropolitan court against The Wire over a report which claimed that his firm Temple Enterprise’s turnover grew exponentially after the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

The magistrate ordered a court inquiry in the matter under Section 202 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (to decide whether or not there is sufficient grounds for proceeding).

In his application, Shah prayed for “criminal action against the respondents for defaming and tarnishing the reputation of the complainant through an article, which is scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libelous and consisting of several defamatory statements”.

The seven respondents in the case are the author of the article, Rohini Singh, founding editors of The Wire Siddarth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and MK Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and Foundation for Independent Journalism, a non-profit company that publishes the news portal.

After the story was published, the Congress quickly went on the offensive: Senior leader  Prithviraj Chavan sought to know if Shah was forewarned of the Centre’s demonetisation decision.

The former Maharashtra chief minister also demanded Shah’s resignation over the controversy. “This is nothing but crony capitalism by the BJP. Why did Jay Shah close down his company a day before demonetisation was announced? Was he aware of what was going to happen in advance?” Chavan asked, according to the Firstpost report.

In reply,  Shah asserted that his son Jay had done no wrong in his commodities business and hence had filed a criminal defamation case over the report, while he dared Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to move the court for several allegations made against his family.

At I_ndia TV’s_ conclave Chunav Manch, Shah said: “Jay has filed a criminal defamation case of Rs 100 crore because he is doing business legally. It doesn’t matter what Rahul says.”

With inputs from agencies