Anil Ambani’s defamation suit spree has now hit The Wire, a digital news organisation. The Wire’s founding editor and veteran journalist MK Venu tweeted, “The Wire just got a fresh Rs 6,000 cr civil suit from ADAG group for doing a video discussion on Rafale, largely raising questions on govt non-transparency in the deal. We now have several civil/criminal suits from the likes of Adani & Anil Ambani on questions asked of the govt!”
The Wire just got a fresh Rs.6000 cr civil suit from ADAG group for doing a video discussion on Rafale, largely raising questions on govt non-transparency in the deal. We now have several civil/criminal suits from the likes of Adani & Anil Ambani on questions asked of the govt!
— M K Venu (@mkvenu1) November 26, 2018
According to a report in Scroll, four Anil Ambani-owned companies have filed 28 defamation suits in Ahmedabad courts — eight against politicians from Opposition parties and 20 against media organisations and journalists. Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Economic Times, The Financial Express, The Week, The Tribune, and NDTV are among the ones at the receiving end of these defamation suits. The report adds that damages claimed by Ambani in at least 16 cases amount to a total of Rs 80,500 crore.
The Wire has three cases registered against it by Ambani’s companies. The latest one, according to Venu, cited a video titled “Rafale Deal: Understanding the Controversy”, in which Venu, journalist Ajai Shukla and Happymon Jacob, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, discussed the Rafale deal.
Apart from these defamation suits, The Wire is also embroiled in a civil as well as a criminal defamation suit filed by Jay Shah, the son of BJP president Amit Shah, after the organisation published a report titled “The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah” that detailed a “dramatic increase” in some of Shah’s businesses since Narendra Modi became prime minister. The case is still in court.