Court may summon Jairam Ramesh in Doval defamation case

 ​New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday said it will on March 2 deliver its order whether Congress leader Jairam Ramesh will be summoned in a defamation case filed by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son Vivek Doval.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal reserved the order on a case against Ramesh, The Caravan magazine and an author in connection with an article titled "The D-Companies".

Vivek Doval's counsel D.P. Singh told the court that the title of the article published on January 16 was itself "scandalous" and created "prejudice in the minds of readers against Vivek Doval and his family".

The online magazine said that Vivek Doval "runs a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands" which is "an established tax haven" and was "registered merely 13 days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government demonetised all existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, in 2016". 

Vivek Doval, testifying as a complainant witness, had told the court earlier that "D Company" is a term coined for Dawood Ibrahim, India's most wanted criminal, while Singh said that a hedge fund cannot be set up overnight or in a few days.

The lawyer also added that Ramesh too, at a press conference, had cited the article and made defamatory allegations against Vivek Doval.

The allegations have caused "irreparable damage" to Vivek Doval's reputation and career, the court was told.