Madras High Court Stays Order Directing Tamil Weekly To Pay ₹25 Lakh To DMK's TR Balu For Publishing Defamatory Content

The bench of Justice SM Subramaniam and Justice C Saravanan passed the interim order in an appeal preferred by the magazine and adjourned the hearing for 2 weeks.

Balu had initially approached the court seeking Rs 1 crore as damages and to restrain the magazine from publishing defamatory news relating to him or his family. He had alleged that on 28^th March 2012, the bi-weekly magazine, in their question and answer session had made some defamatory statements against him. He submitted that in the pretext of answering a question from the reader, the magazine had stated that Balu had unduly benefited from the 'Sethu Samuthiram' project, suggesting that he had made personal gains.

Balu had further alleged that on December 22, 2013, again a defamatory article was published stating that Balu, while speaking at a DMK meeting, had referred to Rahul Gandhi as 'small child'. Arguing that he never spoke at the meeting, he submitted that the defendants had lowered his character and had caused a great dent on his image and reputation.

On February 4 this year, while passing the order, the single judge had observed that the editor, publisher, and printer had not produced a single document on the basis of which the news was published in their magazine.

With respect to the first article, the single judge had held that the suit was barred by limitation and hence did not delve into it.

Concluding that the news item published in the weekly in December 2013 was malicious and defamatory, the court had stressed that the freedom of the press should to be used for publishing news that is backed by solid proof and could not be used to tarnish the image and reputation of a person without verifying the veracity of the news.

Case Title: R Kannan and Others v. T.R Baalu

Citation: 2025 LiveLaw (Mad) 299

Case No: OSA 289 of 2025 and CMP 21786/2025