[BREAKING] Telangana Court directs The Wire to take down 14 articles against Bharat Biotech, COVAXIN in ₹100 crore defamation suit

A Telangana court has directed news portal The Wire to take down fourteen articles published on its website against COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer, Bharat Biotech International Limited..The Court also restrained The Wire from further publishing any defamatory articles on Bharat Biotech and its product COVAXIN.The order was passed by an Additional District Judge at Ranga Reddy District Court in a ₹100 crore defamation suit filed by Bharat Biotech against the publication..The suit was filed against the publisher of The Wire, Foundation for Independent Journalism, its Editors Siddharth Vardarajan, Sidharth Roshanlal Bhatia and MK Venu, and nine others who wrote the articles against Bharat Biotech and COVAXIN.Senior Counsel K Vivek Reddy, appearing for Bharat Biotech, argued that The Wire had published articles which contained false allegations against Bharat Biotech and COVAXIN with a malicious intent to undermine the reputation of the company.Reddy argued that Bharat Biotech had previously developed vaccines for Tuberculosis, Zika Rotavirus, Chikungunya and Typhoid and received national and global recognition and has now collaborated with leading Government of India institutions to develop the vaccine.The Wire published several articles making false allegations on vaccine authorization and approvals without doing a proper fact-check, he contended..After hearing the arguments, the Court noted that even after the Government of India had approved the vaccine, articles continued to be published on The Wire. The Court also highlighted the fact that Bharat Biotech is the only candidate which has been authorized to manufacture the vaccine for children between 15 to 18 years and that the defamatory articles published on the website will lead to vaccine hesitancy.It, therefore, directed removal of the defamatory articles from the website within 48 hours and also restrained The Wire from publishing any defamatory articles about Bharat Biotech and its product COVAXIN.The suit for Bharat Biotech was filed through its counsel K Manoj Reddy, Vamsi Ginnakunta, B Aditya and Bharat Biotech in-house counsel Shobhit Ahuja.