Mumbai: The Bombay high court has given relief to Tata Sons chairman emeritus Ratan Tata and his board of directors (BOD) in a two-year-old criminal def-amation case filed by in-dustrialist Nusli Wadia.
The high court quashed criminal proceeding initiated by a local magistrate court. Mr Wadia, in his complaint before the magistrate in 2016, had stated that after voting against Mr Tata, the businessman and his BOD made defamatory statements against him.
A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre was hearing the petition filed by Ratan Tata.
Mr Wadia, in his complaint before the magistrate, claimed that Tata and others made defamatory statements against him after they removed Cyrus Mistry on October 24, 2016 as the group chairman of Tata Sons. Mr Wadia was on the board as an independent director of group companies like Indian Hotels Company that runs the Taj group of hotels, TCS, Tata Motors and Tata Steel, among others. Shareholders voted him out at a specially convened general meeting between December 2016 and February 2017.
Mr Wadia said he approached the magistrates court, as he was not satisfied with the explanation given by the respondents following his letters to them. He, therefore, initiated defamation proceedings against Tata and others under IPC Section 500.
Senior counsel Abhis-hek Manu Singhvi, appe-aring for Ratan Tata, earlier told the court that the defamation case was bec-ause of fallout of a corporate dispute. He said the entire case was filed with complete non-application of mind. “The case is only a fallout of a corporate dispute between Ratan Tata and Nusli Wadia, who is a strong supporter of Cyrus Mistry,” Mr Singhvi argued.
