On Friday, Justice AA Nakkiran rejected News Nation’s request to review the court’s 2022 order.
According to Financialexpress, the Madras High Court has once again made it clear that it won’t revisit its earlier decision that allowed Chennai Super Kings (CSK) star Mahendra Singh Dhoni to send formal questions to the TV channel News Nation. This is part of Dhoni’s INR 100 crore defamation case filed in 2014 against News Nation, Zee Media, and former IPS officer G Sampath Kumar. The case stems from accusations that wrongly linked Dhoni to the IPL match-fixing scandal.
On Friday, Justice AA Nakkiran rejected News Nation’s request to review the court’s 2022 order. The channel’s lawyers claimed their previous lawyer had mistakenly agreed to Dhoni’s request to submit written questions (called interrogatories), without proper instructions. They argued that this move was a misuse of the legal process meant only to drag out the trial.
The new lawyer for the channel also said that each accused in the case had received different sets of questions and that they should be dealt with separately based on their content.
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Dhoni’s lawyers responded by saying that a review could only happen if the original order had a serious flaw, lacked legal strength, or resulted in unfair consequences. They also referred to an earlier order from a division bench of the same court which had already dismissed a similar request from the other side.
Taking that into account, Justice Nakkiran said the review plea from News Nation had no merit and should not be entertained. The court’s latest ruling confirms that Dhoni has every right to get direct answers from News Nation about their reporting. This also means the case is likely to move forward, with the channel now required to reply to Dhoni’s questions.
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