New Delhi: National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval’s son Vivek completed Wednesday recording his statement in his defamation plea against ‘The Caravan’ magazine for an alleged defamatory article and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh for using that content.
Vivek told Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal that all the allegations levelled by the magazine and later repeated by Ramesh at a press conference were baseless and false and damaged his reputation in the eyes of family members and professional colleagues. The court has posted the matter for February 11 when the statement of other witnesses will be recorded.
Besides Vivek, there are two other witnesses – his friend Nikhil Kapoor and business partner Amit Sharma – who will also record their statements in support of the criminal defamation complaint.
Vivek in his complaint had said that the magazine and Ramesh had attempted to ‘deliberately malign and defame’ him to ‘settle scores with his father’.
The Caravan in its January 16 online write-up titled ‘The D Companies’ had said that Vivek, ‘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’.
According to the complaint, Ramesh had held a press conference January 17 reiterating the ‘baseless and unfounded facts’ as narrated in the article.
With regard to Ramesh, the complaint said that the press conference addressed by him went ‘beyond the mere narration in the article’ and that he was already geared and armed to launch an attack, ‘merely waiting for the publication of the article’, which could then provide a ‘smokescreen to the otherwise targeted and deliberate attack on the reputation of the complainant and his family’.
Vivek also said in his plea that the article has been used as a political tool to ‘foster in unscrupulous hands’ to ‘seek vendetta and wreak vengeance’.
PTI
