Journalist Ravi Nair was granted bail on Friday in a criminal defamation case filed by Adani Enterprises Limited, with a court in Gandhinagar suspending his one-year prison sentence for a month to allow him to appeal.
The magistrate’s court ordered the suspension after Nair sought relief following his conviction earlier this week.
The court had on Tuesday sentenced him to one year of simple imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 after finding him guilty of defamation.
The case relates to a series of posts published by Nair on the social media platform X between October 2020 and July 2021 concerning the Adani Group. The posts referred to allegations made by Hindenburg Research and commentary on a strike against the proposed privatisation of the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust.
Adani Enterprises, the flagship firm of industrialist Gautam Adani’s conglomerate, had alleged that the posts contained false and defamatory statements aimed at damaging the company’s reputation among the public and investors. The firm argued that the content did not qualify as fair comment or legitimate criticism.
In its conviction order, the court said the offence of defamation had been proved and noted that the matter was triable as a summons case, making a separate hearing on sentencing unnecessary. The magistrate also declined to grant probation, observing that Nair, as a journalist and public commentator, was aware of the reach and impact of digital statements and their potential to cause reputational harm.
The suspension of the sentence enables Nair to approach a sessions court within a month to challenge the conviction.