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 it.
Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani. (File Photo: IANS)
The Adani Group is set to withdraw all defamation suits filed against news portal ‘The Wire’ and its editors in an Ahmedabad court for articles against its companies, highly placed sources said on Wednesday.
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 it.
Besides the portal, its founder-editors Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu, as well as Siddharth Bhatia, Monobina Gupta, Pamela Philipose and Noor Mohammed were also been named in the lawsuits.
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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, the Adani Group had filed a criminal defamation case against the news portal.
Adani Petronet (Dahej) Port Pvt Ltd had accused the ‘The Wire’ of deliberately publishing a defamatory article on its website to malign the company’s image.
In its petition, filed under sections 499 and 500 of the IPC, alleging criminal defamation, the Adani Group said that the article in question was published on December 11, 2017 “with the sole intention of harming the reputation of the complainant (Adani Power Maharashtra Limited)”.
The article is intended to create “cheap publicity”, smacks of “distaste, prejudice and malice against the complainant”, and is a result of a “well-thought-out conspiracy” to tarnish the image, the petition said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Reliance Group, led by Anil Ambani, announced its decision to withdraw the Rs 5,000 crore civil defamation suit, filed in a court here, against Congress leaders and the National Herald newspaper over their statements and an article on the controversial Rafale fighter jet deal.
(With agency inputs)
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