In a major setback to BJD leader and BMC Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena, a local court here on Friday lifted the ban it had imposed on the telecast of a sex video tape allegedly showing Jena in a compromising position with a woman along with another male person.
The Civil Court (Senior Division) observed that it didn’t find any ‘justifiable reason’, as mentioned by the Mayor in his petition, to stop telecast of the video.
“The alleged news item has been telecast by the electronic media and the same has also been published in the daily newspapers by the print media, but only electronic media has been impleaded in the case. This squarely goes to show that the petitioner has not come to the Court clean hand…..So the case of the petitioner cannot be discarded and it cannot be held that the plaintiff/petitioner has not come to the Court in clean hand for which he is not entitled to protection U/o. 39 Rule 1 and 2 CPC even if he has been able to establish the three ingredients which are required to grant interim injunction,” the court stated.
On December 17 last, the court had restrained telecast of the sex clip which had been uploaded by Pradip Pandey in his web portal Niakhunta.com and later brought to the media’s notice by Student Congress State president Itish Pradhan Pradhan.
The court, in its order on Friday, also asked Pradhan to refrain from making any defamatory statements against Jena without possessing any ‘proof’. Pradhan said he would move a higher court against the restriction.
However, the court would hear the defamation petition filed by Jena against Pradhan and Pandey.