Arrest Warrant Against Journalist Ravi Nair in Adani Defamation Suit
Freelance journalist Ravi Nair. Image Courtesy: Twitter
New Delhi: Freelance journalist Ravi Nair, who has extensively written about the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) economic policies and the business dealings, such as the Rafale deal, including deals of the Adani Group, has been served an arrest warrant by the Delhi Police in connection with a criminal defamation suit filed against him by the conglomerate in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
According to a report filed by The Wire, the suit requires Nair to appear before a trial court in Gandhinagar. Surprisingly, Nair was “neither served a summons nor provided any copy of the complaint” against him. The journalist also told The Wire that he wasn’t told which story or social media post had prompted the Group to file the suit.
“I didn’t even know that there was a case filed against me. They should have served summons first. If the court has sent a summons, it never came to me… I have never received anything,” Nair told The Wire.
Senior journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, against whom the Gujarat-based industrial group had filed a defamation case in January 2021 pertaining to an article published in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) on June 14, 2017, tweeted that Nair “has not received any court summons or the complaint lodged by Adani Enterprises Ltd against him”.
In the late-afternoon on Monday 25 July, independent journalist Ravi Nair was served with a bailable warrant for appearance in a court in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, by the Delhi police. He has not received any court summons or the complaint lodged by Adani Enterprises Ltd against him.
— ParanjoyGuhaThakurta (@paranjoygt) July 26, 2022
Nair has filed several investigative stories in the last few years some of which have been critical of BJP’s economic policies and the controversial Rafale deal.
In November 2018, Nair filed a report for The Wire and questioning how the benchmark price for 36 Rafales went up from €5.2 billion to €8.2 billion and on what basis did the Cabinet Committee on Security agree to pay more per jet than the MMRCA RFP had envisaged for the same configuration?
Nair has also written various exclusive reports for Newsclick, too, ranging from Rafale, Pawan Hans, CAG, electoral bonds among others.
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