A local court in Ahmedabad on Tuesday issued summons against the accused in defamation case filed by BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay. The court has now posted the next hearing in case for November 13.
The summons has been issued under Section 500 and 114 of the IPC (punishment for defamation and abettor in defamation) as well as Section 202 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court has also issued summons against the reporter and editors of online news portal The Wire, for publication of an article against Jay.
According to Jay’s advocate SV Raju prima facie it was a case of defamation and his client’s contention before the court was that the article was published with the intent and knowledge to defame and that it was not published in good faith.
There was an ulterior motive in publishing the article and the timing was deliberate to make it an issue for the elections, said Raju adding that Jay’s reply was not considered while publishing the article.
An article was published in news portal The Wire on the Jay’s company which had risen 16,000 times within a year of Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. In the same article published on October 8 in the portal claimed that the revenue of Shah’s son had jumped from Rs 50,000 to more than Rs 80 crore during the period.
On October 9, Jay filed a defamation case for publishing a defamatory article on him against seven entities including the writer Rohini Singh, editors Siddharth Vardarajan and MK Venu as well as owners of ‘The Wire’ – Federation for Independent Journalists (FIJ).