Court to examine defamation complaint by Doval's son

A Delhi court on Tuesday decided to examine a complaint filed by NSA Ajit Doval's son Vivek Doval against a magazine for publishing a defamatory article and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh for using that content to "deliberately malign and defame" him to "settle scores with his father".

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal fixed January 30 to record the statement of Doval on his complaint, naming 'The Caravan' as also the author of the article, as the accused.

Besides Vivek Doval, there are two other witnesses -- his friend Nikhil Kapoor and business partner Amit Sharma -- who will record their statements in support of the criminal defamation complaint.

The complaint alleged that the article had termed the companies run by Vivek as "D-Companies", which was a very demeaning name for him and for the entire country.

Advocate D P Singh, appearing for Vivek Doval, pointed out the reference has been to D-company in the article.

"What does it (D-Company) mean," the ACMM asked. To this, the counsel said it is about underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who is a fugitive, and is running illegal activities from abroad.

"A number of movies have been made using this name (D-Company) to indicate Dawood," the counsel said.

According to the complaint, Ramesh had held a press conference on January 17 reiterating the "baseless and unfounded facts" as narrated in the article. The magazine in its January 16 online write-up titled 'The D Companies' had claimed Doval, "runs a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands" which is "an established tax haven" and was "registered merely 13 days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government demonetised all existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, in 2016".