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- Justice on Trial NGO withdrew BBC defamation suit.
- Lawsuit sought Rs 10,000 crore for alleged defamation.
- Filed over "India: The Modi Question" documentary.
A Gujarat-based NGO, Justice on Trial, has officially withdrawn its Rs 10,000 crore defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from the Delhi High Court. The legal action was originally filed over the 2023 documentary “India: The Modi Question,” which the non-profit alleged cast a slur on India's global reputation.
NGO Withdraws Defamation Suit Against BBC
The organisation had claimed that the two-part series contained highly false and defamatory imputations against both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian judiciary. According to news agency PTI, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela permitted the petitioner’s counsel to withdraw the suit, saying “Accordingly, the I.P.A. 1/2023 alongwith the suit is dismissed as withdrawn with liberty so sought, granted.”
The Delhi High Court officially approved the withdrawal on September 3, after the NGO's lawyer, Siddharth Sharma stated he had direct instructions to drop the case. The lawsuit had been filed alongside an “Indigent Person Application,” a legal mechanism that allows an individual or group to file a case without paying standard court fees.
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While the high court had previously issued notices to both the UK and India branches of the BBC regarding the application, the NGO withdrew it with the court's permission to potentially file a fresh lawsuit on the same issue in the future. According to the plea filed, the two-part documentary was released in January 2023 by BBC (UK) as the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, alongside BBC (India) as its local operations office.
What's The Case?
The plea highlighted that the two episodes of “India: The Modi Question” were produced and distributed through these interconnected branches to broadcast the controversial content worldwide. The petitioner sought damages of Rs 10,000 crore in favour of the NGO and against the defendants on account of the “loss of reputation and goodwill caused to the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, the Government of India, the Government of the State of Gujarat as it was during the period of the Gujarat Riots, and also the people of India.”
The lawsuit further claimed the “disparaging and defamatory” statements of the defendant have caused grave and irreparable injury to the reputation of and denuded the goodwill that has been built by the prime minister, the government of India, the government of Gujarat and also the people of India, as reported by PTI.
The two-part documentary, “India: the Modi Question”, was released in January 2023. The documentary centred around the 2002 Gujarat riots, when Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. It showed how the state government had responded to the riots.
The government had banned the documentary, with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) labelling it as a “propaganda piece that lacks objectivity and reflects a colonial mindset.”