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Dev (NA)     23 January 2015

Unauthenticated news published to defame husband

In a case of 498a and DV, the wife got her husband jailed. He was later set free on bail sought from the high court. At the same time a case of RCR was going on but the wife was not appearing in any hearings thereof. So the court went for the publication of notices in English and Hindi newspapers. By the order of the court alone the husband got the notices published in the newspapers. Mad on this, the wife and her family bribed the local police and in order to defame the husband and his family got false news published in a local newspaper.

 

 

The news was in short:

 

A former wife has reported that her former husband is emailing and texting her giving threats of murder and defamation of her and her family. The husband used to beat her with roads and used to come home late and drunk. He was jailed before and so is threatening the wife now.


 

In the above news, the wife's name and identity was kept secret while the husband's full name was used along with his address. The city is not a big one and hence a friend of the husband's sister told about the news published otherwise they would not know about it easily. This shows how the defamation of the husband was achieved by the wife without any fear of law.

 

 

The husband contacted the news agency which apologized and published another piece of news in the same paper stating:

 

 

The allegations were not supported by any evidence or proof and that an RCR was already going on in the family court. It is also observed that the husband is the present husband of the said wife and she is still the legal wife of him as they are not yet divorced.


 

However, the news agency did not mention the wife's name or her identity stating that they were forced by the local police to publish the news and that they learnt it later that they had made a mistake which they corrected by re-publishing the news to reflect the facts,

 

 

Is there a way to counter attack this wife and his family and also on the local police without whose illegal help this insane thing would not have been possible.

 

 

Please Note: The husband got the notices published because he was instructed so by the court. He did not do that because he wanted to defame the respondent. Whereas, the wife got the false news published just to satisfy the whimsical behaviour of her parents and of herself.



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 4 Replies

K.K.Ganguly (Advocate)     23 January 2015

1. For suing your wife or police, you need to have evidence that they had published the said news,

 

2. You can sue the Newspaper publication for publishing false and defamatory reports without verifying from the concerned person.

Dev (NA)     23 January 2015

I have the copy of the newspaper. I also have the copy of the second news they published saying that the allegations were not supported by any evidence.

 

It does not make any difference now what the newspaper says because they have already published my name and identity without any real grounds.

 

The have essentially defamed me and this is known to all and sundry in my town of over 10 lacs population. 

 

 

I don't want to hire a lawyer for this purpose. Can I file my complaint here in New Delhi? I was here when the two pieces of news were published in Rajasthan.

saravanan s (legal advisor)     25 January 2015

how they have mentioned your address..for ex if some name and some place name is mentioned you cant say that they have mentioned you only..for there may be several persons of  your name in the area.if you can prove that it clearly mentions you then file under sec 499,501

Dev (NA)     25 January 2015

Hi Saravanan!

 

Yes, the news appears exactly in a way that it would point at me without a second thought.

 

Besides, as I said above, the news agency told me the name of my wife and said she pushed it too hard with the help of some other people who are into news agency and because of their influence they did not verify the news before publishing it. I don't have a record of this conversation but to address it and show their apology they asked me to draft a report which they would publish in their newspaper. My sister got them my report and they published it in their newspaper that the said allegations were not supported by any proof and that it was also not proved yet that the husband used to beat her wife, etc.

 

The news agency also confirmed that they had reached the involved police station who got the news published in a hurry and without showing any medical report or anything substantial thereof.

 

So, in a way. the news agency did apologize and counter-attack the allegations but in either case, my name and identity was revealed while hers was kept hidden. I asked the news agency to publish her name and identity but they denied saying that women have rights to keeping their identity hidden and since her name was not in the original news so it would not appear in the second news too.

 

This was not acceptable to me.


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