Exact defamatory content against AEL not shown: Guha Thakurta's lawyer to court

New Delhi, Sep 17 (PTI) The counsel for journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta argued before a Delhi court on Wednesday that the exact defamatory content published by him against Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) was not shown.

District Judge Rakesh Kumar Singh was hearing Guha Thakurta's appeal against a civil court's September 6 interim order restraining him from publishing or circulating allegedly unverified and defamatory content against AEL.

The order had also directed the 10 defendants, including Guha Thakurta, to take down contentious material already published on various platforms, including websites, articles and social media posts, within a stipulated period.

Appearing in the court for Guha Thakurta, senior advocate Trideep Pais said, "They are enjoying an interim order. This is going to create a problem for all websites. I am an independent journalist. I also publish on other websites. Articles cited are from 2017 to August 2025. It is not shown what is defamatory." "An injunction is passed without referring to what is defamatory. Then the court goes one step further. It allows the plaintiff to get anything removed. It is an overboard order. No reasoning is shown. It will create problems for all websites," he added.

The lawyer claimed that the ex-parte injunction granted by the court did not list the reasons why and which parts of the content were defamatory, and how it harmed the plaintiff (AEL).

"It has not been shown what is defamatory, what the defamatory article is. This is a flaw of the impugned (earlier) order," Pais said.

He claimed that after the order, even URLs that were not mentioned in the plaint were being removed.

Meanwhile, another lawyer informed the court that he was appearing in the matter on behalf of Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta, Ayaskanta Das and Ayush Joshi, who have filed another appeal against the civil judge's order, which is listed for hearing on Thursday.

Earlier, the civil judge had passed the order while hearing a defamation suit filed by AEL.

The defendants in the case are Guha Thakurta, Nair, Dasgupta, Das, Joshi, Bob Brown Foundation, Dreamscape Network International Private Limited, Getup Limited, Domain Directors Private Limited trading as Instra and John Doe parties. PTI MNR RC