Laga Laga Laga 'The Wire' ko Shock Laga; HC finds article on Jay Amit Shah prima facie defamatory
Gandhinagar, January 09: News portal The Wire got a slap on its pseudo - vilifying journalism from the Gujarat high court on Monday. The Gujarat HC said that article of The Wire written on the sudden rise in revenue of the company owned by BJP National President Amit Shah's son Jay Shah appears to be defamatory and the journalists will have to face trial on charges of criminal defamation. The Wire published an article on 8 October 2017 amidst the heated political battle of Gujarat polls with the title "The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah" with an image of PM Modi, Amit Shah and Jay Shah and with a special tagline- "BJP president Amit Shah’s son, Jay Shah, has seen a dramatic increase in some of his businesses since Narendra Modi became prime minister.
The wicked article got attention as the political scenario was much stirred up not only in Gujarat but the entire nation was on discussing on the BJP vs Congress battle.
The article said: "Company balance sheets and annual reports obtained from the RoC reveal that in the financial years ending March 2013 and 2014, Shah’s Temple Enterprise Private Ltd. engaged in the negligible activity and recorded losses of Rs 6,230 and Rs 1,724 respectively. In 2014-15, it showed a profit of Rs 18,728 on revenues of only Rs 50,000 before jumping to a turnover of Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-16. The astonishing surge in Temple Enterprise’s revenues came at a time when the firm received an unsecured loan of Rs 15.78 crore from a financial services firm owned by Rajesh Khandwala, the samdhi (in-law) of Parimal Nathwani, a Rajya Sabha MP and top executive of Reliance Industries."
Refusing to quash the criminal defamation proceedings that the metropolitan court initiated on the complaint that Jay Shah filed against the journalists of The Wire for publishing an article 'The Magic Touch of Jay Amit Shah', which said that Shah's company's revenue went up to Rs 80 crore from Rs 50,000 in a short period of time. Justice J B Pardiwala said, “The most disturbing part of the article, or to put it in other words, the imputation which could be termed as prima facie defamatory is the averment that the turnover of the company owned by the complainant, who happens to be the son of the leader of the Bhartiya Janta Party increased 16,000 times over in the year following the election of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister and the elevation of his father to the post of the party president.”
The judge also commented that from the two articles published by The Wire, "a case is made out to proceed against the writ applicants (journalists) for the offence of defamation". The order reads, "The most disturbing part of the article, the imputation which could be termed as prima facie defamatory is the averment that the turnover of the company owned by the complainant (Jay Shah), who happens to be the son of the leader of the Bhartiya Janta Party increased 16,000 times over in the year following the election of Sri Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister and the elevation of his father to the post of the party president."
"Prima facie, the article tries to portray a picture that an ordinary company, which had a meagre revenue of Rs 50,000 proceeded to accumulate revenue of Rs 80 crore in a single year and that is only because of the political position of the father of the complainant and at a time when Shri Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister," the court said.
The judge further said, "What the court has to consider is the effect of such an article on the mind of an ordinary right-thinking member of the society, particularly, bearing in mind the class of persons who would be interested in reading such article.