Editorial: Don't even think about the Adanis

The latest move to take down internet content adverse to Gautam Adani was a brazen but clumsy bid to muzzle independent journalism by using the lower judiciary’s tendency to issue hasty injunctions. It illustrates overreach by the lower judiciary to aid the interests of the BJP-led Union government and its friends in the corporate world.

Without as much as a preamble, a civil judge of a court in Delhi issued, on Sept 6, an ex parte injunction directing journalists and podcasters to expunge content relating to Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL), ruling that the material was prima facie “unverified, unsubstantiated and ex facie defamatory” to the company. If the order to self-remove content was not complied with, Google, YouTube, and Twitter were ordered to disable access to the content within 36 hours. The content creators included Newslaundry, The Wire, HW News, Ravish Kumar, Dhruv Rathee, The Deshbhakt, and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

When the journalists did not comply, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting stepped in to issue notices to media platforms to remove 138 YouTube videos and 83 Instagram posts referencing Adani. The content included not just investigative journalism but also satire, incidental mentions, and even screenshots and headlines referencing Adani in relation to the bribery proceedings against him by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which are a matter of public record. Some of the journalists challenged the order and got it quashed by a higher judge, who observed that they should have been given a hearing before passing the order.

This is not the first time that people in power and their friends in the corporate world tried to kill internet content showing them in a bad light. Two facts make this case egregious: one, the ex parte interim order was a shotgun effort to stifle scrutiny of a friend of the regime; second, it applied to all kinds of content, including reportage, commentary, analysis, even a visual of an existing published article with a caption encouraging followers to read more.

This was absurd overreach by the lower judiciary. If even a screenshot of a publicly available headline can be treated as defamation, then the bar for takedowns would be set so low that even acknowledging news adverse to the favoured party can be questioned. It is a ridiculous application of the defamation law. It potentially criminalises even citations and references and falls one remove from thought crime.

Neoliberal regimes tend to reward their friends in the corporate world with a free pass against public scrutiny. By going to court against adverse content and gaining this blanket order, AEL was only flashing that pass. Sometimes, such ill-gotten privileges are exercised gratuitously—as it was in this case, to remove content that has existed online for years. What purpose might such flex of power serve? Often, the purpose is to deter future reportage or future scrutiny by independent voices. This is deterrence litigation.

This case also exposes a malaise in our judiciary, where lower court judges frequently issue sweeping but untenable orders favouring the powerful in the expectation that a higher court will eventually correct the flaw. This is a way of kicking the can down the line. It results in legally fragile but politically convenient rulings that may not stand the test of appellate scrutiny but nonetheless serve their immediate purpose of silencing critics and buying time for friends of the regime.