Adani To Withdraw Defamation Cases Against “The Wire”
NEW DELHI : Adani Group is set to withdraw all defamation suits filed against news portal The Wire and its editors in an Ahmedabad court for having published articles against its companies, said highly placed sources on May 22, reported IANS.
Adani Power Maharashtra Limited had filed two suits against the web portal, while Group firm Adani Petronet Port Dahej Limited had moved a defamation case against, while Group firm Adani Petronet Port Dahej Limited had moved a defamation case against it. Besides the portal, its founder-editors Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu, as well as Siddharth Bhatia, Monobina Gupta, Pamela Philipose and Noor Mohammed have also been named in the lawsuits.
Confirming the development, Varadarajan told IANS: “We understand that the Adani Group has moved to withdraw all the defamation cases, civil and criminal, instituted against The Wire over the past two years for various articles we have published on the Group’s businesses. We will issue a statement once this process attains finality.”
In January 2018, Adani had filed a criminal defamation complaint based on an article titled ‘Does it make economic sense for IOC and GAIL to Invest in Adani’s LNG Terminals?’ published in November 2017.
Earlier, in June 2017, The Wire had republished an article against Adani Group by veteran journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta that was originally published in the Economic and Political Weekly, but later taken down following notices from the conglomerate. Adani Group had filed a criminal complaint against The Wire. In July 2018, a Gujarat court had set aside the complaint.
