False Claims of The Wire Apologising to Jay Shah in SC Go Viral

We found that the claim was false as the trial for the case has not even begun in the court.

A claim viral on the internet states that news website The Wire had offered to apologise to Jay Shah, son of Home Minister Amit Shah, in the Supreme Court after losing a defamation case filed against the portal.

However, we found that the claim was false as the trial for the case has not even begun in the trial court. We also reached out to The Wire's founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan who rubbished the claim.

CLAIM

The viral claim read in Hindi, “अमित शाह जी के बेटे पर झूठा आरोप लगाने पर @thewire_in ने केस हारने के बाद सुप्रीम कोर्ट में माफीनामे की पेशकश की है।”
[Translation: The Wire has offered an apology in the Supreme Court after they lost the case for falsely accusing Amit Shah's son.]

The claim was shared widely on Twitter and Facebook.

Several Twitter and Facebook accounts affiliated to the BJP, including that of party leader Hari Om Pandey, shared the claim.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

The news website published a report in 2017 that said that revenues of Jay Shah's company had grown massively the year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. Reacting to the article, Shah filed a civil defamation suit of Rs 100 crore against the publication and its journalists on 12 October 2018. A separate criminal defamation case was also filed against the publication.

The Wire had moved the Supreme Court in January 2018, after the Gujarat High Court rejected a petition filed by the news portal, seeking quashing of a criminal defamation case.

In August 2019, The Wire withdrew two of its petitions for the quashing of cases against the website and its editors and had decided to defend itself in the trial court in Gujarat. The SC had allowed the withdrawal of the plea and had asked the trial to be completed “as expeditiously as possible”.

We contacted The Wire's founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan and he said, "The claim is utter rubbish. The case has not even started."

The reporter who wrote the story on Jay Shah, Rohini Singh, also called out the misinformation on Twitter. “You have pronounced the judgment even before the hearing of the case has begun in the trial court,” she wrote.

We also looked for credible news reports and did not find any recent updates on the beginning of a trial in this case.

Therefore, the claim that The Wire lost the defamation case filed by Jay Shah and offered him an apology in the Supreme Court is false.

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