Court adjourns hearing of Amit Shah's son's case against news website

A lawyer for Jay Shah sought time from Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S K Gadhvi, saying senior advocate S V Raju could not be present in the court as he was busy in the high court.

The court granted the time and adjourned the hearing to October 16.

Jay Shah had filed a criminal defamation case in a metropolitan court against the news portal on Monday over a report, which claimed his firm Temple Enterprise's turnover grew exponentially after the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014.

The magistrate had ordered a court inquiry in the matter under CrPC section 202 (to inquire into the case to decide whether or not there is sufficient ground for proceeding).

In his application, Shah prayed for "criminal action against the respondents for defaming and tarnishing the reputation of the complainant through an article, which is scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libelous and consisting of several defamatory statements".

The seven respondents in the case are - the author of the article, Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddarth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M K Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and Foundation for Independent Journalism, a non-profit company that publishes 'The Wire'. The case seeks action against respondents under IPC sections 500 (defamation), 109 (abetment), 39 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy).