Delhi court rejects Sucheta Dalal's plea against gag on news reports linking Manoj Sandesara to Sterling Biotech fraud

A Delhi court on Thursday rejected the plea filed by journalist Sucheta Dalal challenging the interim order banning any news content linking Manoj Kesari Chand Sandesara or his family members to the alleged Sterling Biotech bank fraud case. 

District Judge Vinod Kumar Meena of the Tis Hazari Court held that Dalal's appeal is not maintainable since she can approach the civil judge who is yet to finally decide Sandesara's temporary injunction application.

Therefore, the Court allowed the application moved by Sandesara seeking the rejection of Dalal's case.

"Without going into the length and breadth of legality/merits of the impugned ex parte interim order, the Court is of the view that the appellant is having an opportunity to be heard before the Ld Trial Court before deciding the application under Order 39 Rule 1 & 2 of CPC finally and accordingly in terms of the observations, as propounded by Hon’ble Apex Court in Venkatasubbiah Naidu (supra), the appeal is not maintainable at this stage," the District Judge ruled.

In his application, Sandesara had said that the veteran journalist had yet to exhaust the remedy available to her to approach the civil judge who had passed the gag order. The civil judge is to hear all the parties within 30 days.

However, Dalal's lawyer argued that parties affected by the order are free to opt for an appeal independent of other remedies available to them. It was stated that Dalal runs a press publication whose rights under Article 19 are affected due to the gag order that does not even name them as a defendant.

Dalal’s Moneywise Media LLP – which runs the Moneylife magazine and digital news portal – has challenged the civil judge’s order of April 4, imposing a ban on Google, Meta and unknown parties (including media houses) from publishing any content linking Sandesaras to Sterling Biotech case. 

The judge had passed an ex parte interim injunction and ordered Google, Meta and John Doe defendants (unknown persons) to de-index, de-list, and de-reference the URLs and content of articles flagged by Sandesara. This included three articles and a YouTube video published by Moneylife. 

It is Dalal’s case that the civil judge’s order was overly broad, failed to identify specific defamatory content, violates free speech and was issued without giving her publication a chance to be heard. Moneywise has claimed it was not named directly in the original suit despite its content being targeted and that it only became aware of the same after takedown notices were sent by YouTube.

 “The Impugned Order also fails to recognize that the Plaintiff is pursuing the defamation claim not only on behalf of him, but also on behalf of the “his family name concerning the case of Sterling Biotech Limited and bank fraud”. This effectively means that the Plaintiff is seeking reliefs on behalf of himself, his family, and Sterling Biotech Limited, even though no other family member or authorised representative of Sterling Biotech Limited is part of the Suit,” Moneywise has said. 

The publication contended that the civil judge’s order providing an ex parte injunction effectively chokes any form of reporting, publication or criticism by Monewise and other publications concerning the Sandesaras and Sterling Biotech bank fraud case. 

Advocates Apar Gupta, Indumugi C, Naman Kumar and Avanti Deshpande appeared for Moneywise Media LLP.

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