'What'll Happen If Articles Aren't Published For One More Day?' Delhi Court Adjourns Hearing Of Journalist's Appeal Against Adani Gag Order

A Delhi Court on Wednesday adjourned the plea filed by Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta challenging an ex-parte order passed by the lower court on September 06, restraining him from publishing stories about the Adani Group.

District Judge Rakesh Kumar Singh of Rohini Courts, the link judge before whom the case was listed as the roster judge was on leave today, refused to hear the matter on merits. The case has been posted tomorrow at 10am, for hearing before the judge holding the roster.

Senior Advocate Trideep Pais appearing for Guha lodged his protest at this, urging that he had got the matter listed today after mentioning, as it is "creating problems" for Guha's websites.

He argued that the ex parte order is "completely overboard", passed over articles in public domain since 2017 onwards, without recording what is defamatory therein.

"The articles are not proximate to suit. There was no urgency to pass the impugned order...it is claimed that contents are defamatory. It is not shown what is defamatory. An injunction is passed without referring to what in those articles or websites are defamatory. You have to show articles are so baseless that my defence won't succeed. No such findings in impugned order. The links don't have any basis in the suit," he argued.

However, the Judge was of the opinion that no demonstrable harm will be caused to Guha if his matter is heard a day after.

"11 days have passed since the impugned order. Why don't you wait for 10 more hours? Will heavens fall if you don't publish it for one more day?" (translated) the judge asked orally.

As Pais insisted that the matter is urgent, the judge further asked,

"Is it a matter of life and death? It's not like your business will fall apart merely by withdrawing the impugned articles. It's not going to fall apart in a day."

Pais then claimed that the Government has taken it upon itself to remove all URLs "not even mentioned in the plaint". 

"Everything is being removed pursuant to the order," he claimed.

Senior Advocate Anurag Ahluwalia appearing for Adani Enterprises then told the Court that the Civil Judge had granted 5 days time for removal of articles, which expired on September 11.

"They are already in contempt. There was a direction for 5 days. They didn't approach the civil judge because they're in contempt. He files an appeal here. How is the appeal maintainable? They're in non-compliance," he submitted.

After hearing the matter for sometime, the Court posted it for tomorrow, 10am.

Significant to note that a similar appeal challenging the same order filed by journalists Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskant Das and Ayush Joshi is also listed tomorrow.

Guha was represented by Senior Advocates Anurag Ahluwalia Trideep Pais along with Advocate Apar Gupta.

Adani Enterprises was represented by Senior Advocates Anurag Ahluwalia and Jagdeep Sharma, along with Advocates Vijay Aggarwal, Nitin Alhawat, Rajiv Tehlan, Sunil Mittal, Naman Joshi, Guneet Sidhu, Verdaan Jain, Muskan Aggarwal.

The journalists have challenged an order passed by Special Civil Judge Anuj Kumar Singh of Rohini Courts. The appeals have been filed before the district court.

Vide the impugned order, the judge had prima facie observed that the reports published by the journalists about the Adani Group were defamatory and unverified.

The judge had passed the ex-parte ad-interim injunction in favour of Adani Enterprises Limited against the journalists and three websites- pranjoy.in, adaniwatch.org and adanifiles.com.au.

Background and About Impugned Order

The Court had said that there was a prima facie case in favour of the Adani Group and that the balance of convenience lies in its favour, considering that continual forwarding or publishing or re-tweeting and trolling against it would further tarnish its image in public perception and may result in media trial.

The suit alleged that the defendants were running “agenda driven” websites and were repeatedly publishing baseless and defamatory content against the Adani Group, its Founder and Chairman.

It was averred that apart from the websites in question, defamatory material was shared widely on Social Medial platforms, other websites and several John Doe persons were publishing the same across various media and websites.

It was contended that Adani Enterprises was being maliciously and deliberately attacked its operations were hampered globally, droving away their investors, wiping off massive amount of funds of investors and created panic in the market.

Vide the impugned order, the Court had directed the journalists to expunge the defamatory material against Adani Group from their respective articles or social media posts or tweets and if the same is not feasible, remove the same within 5 days.

“Also, attention of defendants are drawn to Rule 3 of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code), Rules 2021 requiring due diligence by the intermediary in hosting/storing/publishing such material. Specifically, attention of the defendants is also drawn to Rule 3(1)(d) of the aforesaid IT Rules, it is also incumbent upon the intermediary to remove / disable access to such content within 36 hours from receipt of such order of the Court or on being notified by the Appropriate Government or its agency,” the Court had ordered.