A magistrate court in Gujarat, on Tuesday, February 10, has sentenced investigative journalist Ravi Nair to one year of imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 5000 in a criminal defamation case filed by Adani Enterprises Limited. Ravi is an independent journalist, who has consistently reported on corporate monopoly and misconduct, including the Adani-Hindenburg row. 

The conviction was based on a series of posts made by Ravi between October 2020 and July 2021 on his X (formerly Twitter) handle and on his investigations into the Adani group published on Adani Watch. TNM reviewed the tweets and found that 14 of them were links Ravi shared from publications such as Times of India, Bloomberg, Newsclick, Caravan and Adani Watch, sometimes with his own comments.

Judicial First Class Magistrate Damini Dixit ordered that Ravi was guilty of section 499 (criminal defamation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The court did not accept his argument that the publications constituted fair comment and criticism on matters of public importance and governance.

One of the X posts which the Adani Enterprises submitted as defamatory was Ravi’s criticism of the Union Government’s announcement regarding natural gas marketing reforms in October 2020. The post, which carried a link to the cabinet decision, questioned if it was a transparent move, adding that Adani wanted to be ‘numero uno of the CNG market’.

On October 11, 2020, Ravi posted an article regarding a strike against the proposed privatisation of the Jawaharlal........

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