Gujarat High Court refuses to stay gag order on The Wire in Jay Shah defamation case
The court has sought the businessman’s reply and will next hear the case after two weeks.
The Gujarat High Court on Thursday refused to stay a lower court’s order barring news website The Wire from publishing articles on the companies of Jay Shah, the son of Bharatiya Janata Party National President Amit Shah, The Indian Express reported.
The court has now sought Shah’s reply and will hear the case next after two weeks.
The Wire had moved the High Court after the Metropolitan Court in Ahmedabad issued the order in Jay Shah’s favour in October. The lower court also issued summons to the website’s editors and journalist Rohini Singh, who wrote the article that Jay Shah argues is defamatory.
Senior lawyer Dushyant Dave, who is representing The Wire, said the article was not defamatory in nature and was based on facts and public documents.
After the report was published, the Congress had demanded an investigation into allegations that Jay Shah’s Temple Enterprise Pvt Ltd saw a huge spike in revenues – from Rs 50,000 in 2014-’15 to Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-’16 – the year after Narendra Modi came to power.
Amit Shah then came out in his son’s defence, saying there was no “question of corruption”. “If you have evidence to prove your allegations, bring it to court,” the BJP president had said.