india

Updated: Mar 02, 2019 18:31 IST

A Delhi court on Saturday summoned Congress leader Jairam Ramesh in a defamation case, filed by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s son Vivek Doval.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal asked Ramesh, Paresh Nath (Editor-in-Chief of The Caravan magazine), and reporter Kaushal Shroff to appear on April 25.

Observing that allegations made against Vivek Doval were “prima facie defamatory”, the court said there exists sufficient grounds to proceed against all the accused.

The court was hearing a defamation case filed against Ramesh and others by Vivek in connection with an article titled “The D-Companies”, published on January 16.

Vivek’s counsel D.P. Singh told the court the title of the article was itself “scandalous” and created “prejudice in the minds of readers against Vivek and his family”.

Vivek, testifying as a complainant witness, had told the court earlier that “D Company” is a term coined for Dawood Ibrahim, India’s most wanted criminal.

The court said hough the article appears to be factual, the way it was presented damaged the complainant and his family’s reputation.

The court also took note of Vivek’s statement where he showed how his credit was lowered by the article and Ramesh’s press conference where the Congress leader had referred to the article.

“As far as the press conference is concerned, there are indirect imputations of money laundering, round tripping of demonetised money through the fund of the complainant.

“It further relates it to demonetisation and tries to make out a case that the fund of the complainant may be involved in benefiting from the process of demonetisation,” the court noted, saying “this fact has been falsified by Vivek Doval in his evidence”.

“These defamatory statements have been published and widely read,” the court noted.

The court also observed the witness -- Amit Sharma, business partner of Vivek Doval -- has deposed that there was huge unrest among investors and the company suffered gravely due to these allegations.