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Court summons writer, editors for Jay Shah article

Author: TNN
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 25, 2017
URL:   http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31808&articlexml=Court-summons-writer-editors-for-Jay-Shah-article-25102017012026

A metropolitan court here on Tuesday began criminal proceedings on the defamation charges levelled by Jay Shah, son of BJP national president Amit Shah, and summoned six journalists of news portal `The Wire' for publishing an article on the “sudden“ increase in turnover of his company, Temple Enterprise Pvt Ltd.

Additional chief metropolitan magistrate S K Gadhvi ordered the registration of Jay Shah's complaint on charges of criminal defamation and abetment to publish the article, which was “prima facie intended to defame the complainant“. The court, however, refused to accept the charges of criminal conspiracy against the journalists.

The court has summoned Rohini Singh, the author of the article `The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah', and the editors of the portal -Siddharth Varadrajan, Siddharth Bhatia, M K Venu, Monobina Gupta and Pamela Philipose -on November 13.

The article was published on October 8 on the news portal. Jay Shah had moved court the next day .

The court took cognizance of Shah's complaint and initiated criminal proceedings after a court inquiry into the allegations under section 202 of the CrPC. The court, in its order, said that the hurried manner in which the journalists sent a questionnaire to Jay and sought reply in a very short time prompted it to take cognizance of the matter.Moreover, the questionnaire was not sent to another partner of the firm, Jitendra Shah. The Ahmedabad court noted in its conclusion that there was “prima facie an intention to defame the complainant“.

The court said: “The questionnaire was sent in a manner that the complainant did not get enough time and the defamatory article could get published.

“The accused did not give enough time to the complainant and facts regarding Temple Enterprise's revenue of 2015-16 were not published in a proper manner. By creating confusion between turnover and profit, it can be prima facie said that the accused have published defamatory writing.“

Besides Jay Shah's complaint, the court took into consideration documents supplied with the complaint and the testimony of his two friends -Jaimin Shah and Rajiv Shah -who claimed that `The Wire' article had damaged Jay Shah's reputa tion. Shah's counsel S V Raju alleged that `The Wire' had deliberately chosen the time to publish the article in order to create a political issue ahead of the Gujarat polls.

“The article was to be published in a hurry because this has to be made a political issue ahead of elections,“ advocate Raju told the court.

The news portal's article quoted the documents filed with the Registrar of Companies and said the revenue of Shah's company witnessed a staggering rise from Rs 50,000 in 2014-15 to Rs 80.50 crore in 2015-16.

It received unsecured loan of Rs 15.78 crore from one Rajesh Khandwala, promoter of KIFS Financial Services.

 
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