NSA Ajit Doval's son accuses magazine, moves court

A criminal defamation complaint was filed on Monday in a Delhi court by Vivek Doval, son of National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval against a news magazine for allegedly publishing a defamatory article.

Besides the magazine and the author of the article -- Kaushal Shroff, Vivek also filed the complaint against Congress leader Jairam Ramesh for holding a press conference on January 17 reiterating the "baseless and unfounded facts" as narrated in the article.

The article claimed that Vivek was running a hedge fund whose promoters are of dubious antecedents.

He has claimed that the magazine was "deliberately maligning and defaming" him to "settle scores with his father".

The Caravan, had in its January 16 online journal titled, "The D Companies" had said that Vivek, "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".

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal is likely to hear the matter on Tuesday.

Vivek has alleged that the contents of the article present "no illegality" on his part, but the entire narration has been presented in a manner, which suggests "wrongdoings" to the readers.

"The very arrangement of the paragraphs and the interspersion of random paragraphs, has been done with the very purpose of confusing the reader and leaving him with the belief that there is a larger conspiracy at play," said the complaint.

It also said that the social media tweets put out by the magazine's handle gave snippets from the article, which makes it clear that it is merely a targeted attempt to malign and tarnish reputation of Vivek and his family, in order to gain "political credit in light of the upcoming general election".

"The title of the article itself is scandalous to say the least, creating a prejudice in the minds of the readers against the complainant and his family," the complaint said.