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The article written and published on Advocate Deepak Khosla landed Bennett Coleman into trouble when defamation proceedings were initiated against the latter. Bennett Coleman finally got a sigh of relief when recently Delhi High Court quashed those proceedings against the publishing company, its Whole-time Directors, Managing Director and Editors. Several petitions, demanding the quashing of the proceedings, were filed under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. It was Justice RK Gauba who finally passed the judgement. What led Advocate Khosla to initiate defamation proceedings was an article published by the Times of India wherein the two incidents, where Khosla was found guilty of contempt of the court by two separate benches of the High Court, were described in detail. Also, in both the cases, Khosla was sentenced one month of imprisonment along with a fine of 2,000 Rupees. The article was titled “Angry HC sends lawyer to jail for misconduct”. The proceedings of defamation were initiated against the author along with M/s Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (the owner of TOI), Mrs. Indu Jain (Chairman and Whole-time Director of the company) and Mr. Samir Jain (Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Shareholder of the Company). Along with them, Mr. Vineet Jain (Managing Director), Mr. Raj Kumar Jain (CEO and Executive Director) Mr. DhananjayMahapatra, Mr. Shrijeet Mishra and Mr. AnshulChautrvedi were also made parties in the complaint. On finding a prima facie case of commission of the offence of defamation, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (South) called for the proceedings. Reference was made to the provisions of the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1876 while contenting that the accused did not possess the positions of “Publisher”, “Editor” or “Printer” at the relevant point of time, hence, they cannot be held accountable for impugned coverage of court proceedings. Further contentions that were made included the claim that the published news story was not defamatory per se. All these contentions were allowed by the Court and the proceedings were quashed against all the thirteen persons for no offence being made out against them under Sections 500, 501 or 502 of the Indian Penal Code.
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