AHMEDABAD: The Adani group is believed to have moved to withdraw all civil and criminal defamation cases it had filed against online news portal The Wire, its editors and other staff.
The development comes a day after Anil Ambani-led companies moved to withdraw defamation suits filed against the National Herald newspaper and the Congress, and a day before the Lok Sabha results are set to be announced.
While the Adani group did not respond to requests for comment, Siddharth Varadarajan, one of the founder-editors of the news portal, said: “We understand that the Adani Group has moved to withdraw all defamation cases, civil and criminal, instituted against The Wire over the past two years for various articles we have published on the Group’s businesses. We will issue a statement once this process attains finality.”
According to Varadarajan, three Adani group firms — Adani Power Ltd., Adani Power Maharashtra Ltd., and Adani Petronet Port Dahej Limited — had moved six cases of defamation (three criminal and three civil cases demanding Rs 300 crore worth of damages in total) for various stories published by the portal over the last three years, including one that claimed the NDA government had tweaked rules concerning Special Economic Zones (SEZ) that allowed an Adani group firm to reap a Rs 500 crore “bonanza”.
Two defamation suits filed by Anil Ambani-led entities against the portal for Rs 5,000 crore and Rs 6,000 crore each are still under litigation.