Bengaluru Court restrains 68 media houses from airing ‘defamatory news’

A court in Bengaluru restrained 68 media houses from publishing unverified or defamatory content against six Karnataka ministers, Live Law reported.

The ministers in the Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa-led Cabinet – Shivram Hebbar, BC Patil, Byrathi Basavaraj, Somashekhar, K Sudhakar and Narayan Gowda – had approached the court after their colleague Ramesh Jarkiholi, accused of sexually harassing a woman in return for a government job, resigned as the water resources minister.

Additional City Civil Judge D.S.VIJAYA KUMAR ordered

"Therefore, till the next date of hearing, defendants/ opponents are hereby restrained by an Interim-Order of temporary injunction from broadcasting, telecasting or publishing or letting in circulation or posting or accommodating or transmitting or circulating any defamatory news items or showing footages and pictures referring to the plaintiffs in relation to the alleged C.Ds. and committing any act or intentional omission which thereby causes character assassination of the plaintiffs on the basis of the unverified material."

All the six ministers had defected to the BJP from the Congress and JDS in July 2019 leading to the fall of the previous coalition government. All of them were disqualified and won by-elections held in December 2019 and were subsequently made Cabinet ministers. An additional civil magistrate will take up the matters for orders on Saturday.

Earlier, state’s water resources minister Ramesh Jarkiholi resigned after TV channels played a video CD allegedly featuring him and an unidentified young woman in a sex-for-job scandal. In his resignation letter, Jarkiholi said the allegations were false and that he was resigning from the cabinet to save the party from embarrassment.

The ministers in a joint suit stated that the broadcast of such news is not only causing embarrassment to their families, but the voters of their constituencies are also presuming that the ministers are involved in scandals, the report added.