In a 100 crore defamation suit filed by Covid-19 vaccination manufacturing company Bharat Biotech International Limited, Telangana court has directed news portal ‘The Wire’ to strike down 14 articles from its website. The decision was delivered by the bench of Additional District Judge, at district Ranga Reddy.
‘The Wire’ had published several articles on its website against Bharat Biotech International Ltd. and its vaccination ‘COVAXIN’, thus this defamation case.
The court has further directed ‘The Wire’ to abstain from posting any such defamatory articles in the future about the company and their product Covaxin.
This suit was filed by Bharat Biotech International Ltd. against The Foundation of Independent Journalism, Publisher of ‘The Wire’; Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor; Sidharth Roshanlal Bhatia, Founding Editor; Mangalam Venu Kesavan, Founding Editor; and other editors involved in writing those articles – Neeta Sanghi, Vasudevan Mukunth, Shobhan Saxena, Florencia Costa, Prem Anand Murugan, Banjot Kaur, Priyanka Pulla, Seraj Ali, and Jammi Nagaraj Rao.
Senior Counsel K Vivek Reddy, appearing for Bharat Biotech, argued that The Wire had published articles with false allegations against Bharat Biotech and COVAXIN with a malicious intent to undermine the reputation of the Company.
Senior Counsel Reddy argued that Bharat Biotech had previously developed vaccines for Tuberculosis, Zika Rotavirus, Chikungunya and Typhoid and received national and global recognition for the same.
The court while adjudicating the present matter also mentioned that such defaming and derogatory publications might cause apprehension among children as Bharat Biotech International Ltd. is the only enterprise that has been authorised to manufacture vaccinations for the age group of 15 to 18 years.
The bench of the Additional District Judge has directed ‘The Wire’ to take off from their websites, those 14 articles within 48 hours.
