NDTV has been rightly sued for Rs. 10,000 crores by the Reliance Group in a court in Ahmedabad and the hearing has been listed for October 26. The lawsuit is filed against NDTV’s weekly show, Truth vs Hype, which aired on September 29.
NDTV first published the fabricated news without verification and tarnished the image of Reliance Company in general and Anil Ambani in particular. Now when taken to task, they are running around like scavenging jackals and crying foul.
NDTV is next trying to accuse executives of Reliance for ignoring repeated requests to appear on the show or comment on the fabricated news whether Anil Ambani’s Reliance was transparently chosen as the partner for Dassault in a deal that saw India buying 36 fighter jets. They forget that Reliance as a company and Anil Ambani as an individual have more right than the NDTV to ignore such requests.
Next a self Appointed Committee to Protect Journalists, a so called self styled global journalism watchdog, has called Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group suing NDTV for its reportage on the Rafale fighter jet deal a severe attack on press freedom and called for the conglomerate to “end its use of excessive civil defamation cases filed against critical news outlets”. How ridiculous !! as if Anil Ambani has no rights to defend his reputation.
Steven Butler the Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Asia program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. even had the nerve to butt in that “The ridiculously massive civil defamation claim Reliance Group has made against NDTV amounts to a severe attack on press freedom in India.
This American even tried to lecture the Indian Judiciary by yapping that “India’s judiciary must ensure that powerful business groups cannot abuse the country’s legal system to silence critics.” Mr Steven, first resolve your own Guantanamo Bays and trumpets of your President and your Courts before advising the Indian Courts.
Naturally the Reliance Group spokesperson declined to respond to their request for a comment.
NDTV is trying to bolster its self confidence by saying that it will argue in court that the charges of defamation are nothing more than a heavy-handed attempt by Anil Ambani’s group to suppress the facts and prevent the media from doing its job – asking questions about a defence deal and seeking answers that are very much in public interest. As if rest of India is unaware of activities of NDTV.
NDTV has said “As the Rafale deal has become a larger news story in India, the Reliance group has been on a notice-serving spree; to sue a news company for 10,000 crores in a court in Gujarat on false and frivolous charges, ignoring facts that are widely reported everywhere and not just by NDTV, can only be interpreted as an unsophisticated warning to the media to stop doing its job.”
