Hearing in The Wire Case Adjourned After Jay Shah Fails to Turn Up

An article alleging that Jay Shah’s business grew 16,000-fold since 2014 has triggered a political storm.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

An Ahmedabad Court adjourned the hearing of the criminal defamation case slapped on The Wire by Amit Shah’s son, Jay Shah, after Shah – the complainant in the case – failed to turn up for the hearing.

The court will next hear the matter on 16 December.

According to a tweet posted by Siddharth Varadarajan, founder of The Wire, Shah failed to turn up citing ‘social work’ commitments.

Speaking to The Quint, Varadarajan said:

Jay Shah’s lawyer said he wasn’t available to appear in the court today owing to social work. We are trying to verify how far this is true. 

This was meant to be the first hearing in the criminal defamation case that was filed by Shah. Varadarajan further alleged that although the court had issued summons to his company on 25 October, it had reached the concerned parties only on 11 November.

The court reportedly directed the Registrar to ensure that all summons were served and the concerned parties are present for the next hearing on 16 December.

Jay Shah filed a criminal defamation case under section 500 of the IPC against The Wire for an article which claimed that his company’s turnover rose 16,000 times in one year after the NDA came to power. The case has been filed against author of the article Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth Bhatia and MK Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism – the non-profit company that runs The Wire.

In his complaint, Shah termed the article as “scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libelous and consisting of several defamatory statements.”

The Quint has reached out to Jay Shah’s legal team for comment, and will update this article as soon as we hear from them.