Court Orders The Wire to Remove 14 Articles on Bharat Biotech, 100 Cr Defamation Case

A Telangana court on Wednesday issued orders on one of the most famous news portals “The Wire” to take down the 14 published articles defaming the Bharat Biotech. 

This is the same company, that is manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccines in India. As per the reports, the court also abandoned The Wire to write anything defamatory about the company and its product Covaxin. Apart from that Bharat Biotech also filed a defamation case of INR 100 Cr against The Wire at Ranga Reddy District Cout which was issued by an Additional District Judge.

The company filed the case against the publishers of The Wire Foundation for Independent Journalism, its Editors Siddharth Vardarajan, MK Venu, Sidharth Roshanlal Bhatia, among 9 others, including Vasudevan Mukunth, Florencia Costa, Banjot Kaur, Seraj Ali, Neeta Sanghi, Shobhan Saxena, Prem Anand Murugan, Priyanka Pulla, and Jammi Nagaraj Rao. These people were targeted as they particularly wrote articles against Bharat Biotech and the vaccine “COVAXIN.” 

Also, this has been highlighted by the court that Bharat Biotech is the only company that is manufacturing vaccines for children of age between 15-18, and writing such things about the company can create chaos among people. This can also lead to hesitancy among people for getting vaccinated and create public hesitancy.

The court has only given 48 hours to the publication to remove the articles from the website along with restraining them to write anything further. According to Bharat Biotech, The Wire has published baseless and false allegations against them which are hampering their reputation in the market. 

They also added that before publishing any fact about the company they must have researched all the facts and then claim anything. The court while responding to the argument claimed that Covaxinx has been approved by the Government of India and writing against can create confusion for its administration.

Senior counsel K Vivek Reddy who was present on the behalf of Bharat Biotech, also argued in the favour of Bharat Biotech, stating that these false allegations in the company are undermining the company’s reputation as they have already worked with many global companies. K Vivek Reddy also added,

“The Wire published several articles making false statements without proper fact check about the regulatory approvals granted to Bharat Biotech. Even after the Government of India had approved the vaccine, articles continued to be published otherwise on The Wire”

Whereas, Siddharth Vardarajan, editor of the Wire took the case on Twitter and expressed his dismay over the same. According to him, no opportunity was provided to them for claiming their point.