Delhi HC Holds Defamation Suit by Former Chief Secretary Against The Wire Maintainable, But Recalls Broad Gag Order

Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani holds Naresh Kumar's defamation suit against The Wire triable on reckless disregard, but strikes down a sweeping prior-restraint direction as presumptive and over-broad.

The High Court of Delhi has held that a civil defamation suit filed by Naresh Kumar, the former Chief Secretary of Delhi, against news portal The Wire and its journalist (defendants nos. 1 and 2) is maintainable and must proceed to trial. Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, sitting singly, delivered the judgment on 20 July 2026 in an interim application filed under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 read with Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908. While the suit survives, the court simultaneously recalled a blanket direction issued by a predecessor bench in November 2023 that had restrained The Wire from publishing any content “similar” to the impugned article. The court held that such a prospective gag order was over-broad, presumptive, and untenable in law.

The Article and the Lawsuit

On 9 November 2023, The Wire published an article on its website titled Links of Son of Delhi Chief Secretary to Beneficiary's Family in Land Over-Valuation Case Raise Questions. The article concerned the acquisition of approximately 19 acres of land in Village Bamnoli, Delhi, by the National Highways Authority of India for the Dwarka Expressway. A District Magistrate (South-West District) had, in May 2023, awarded compensation of Rs. 353 crores to two Delhi businessmen — Subhash Chand Kathuria and Vinod Kathuria — working out to Rs. 18.54 crores per acre, reversing a 2018 adjudication that had valued the same land at Rs. 53 lakhs per acre.

The Wire's article drew a connection between the plaintiff's son, Karan Chauhan, and the land acquisition transaction. It reported that Subhash Chand Kathuria is the father-in-law of Aman Sarin, promoter of Anantraj Limited, a listed real estate company; that Karan Chauhan has been employed with Anantraj Limited since June 2019 and is also a director in three other companies with business links to that group; and that some of those entities share a common postal and email address with Anantraj Limited. The article raised questions about whether the plaintiff had disclosed a potential conflict of interest when NHAI raised an alarm about the over-valuation.

The article also published the plaintiff's denials at some length. Naresh Kumar stated that his son's commercial affairs were not known to him, that there was no conflict of interest, and that the queries appeared to have been framed with intent to malign him at the instance of the delinquent officer against whom action had been taken.

Naresh Kumar filed CS(OS) 749/2023 in the Delhi High Court seeking, among other reliefs, an injunction restraining The Wire from publishing any similar allegations, and a direction to take down the article and related posts on X (formerly Twitter). He also impleaded X Corp. as defendant no. 3 and Google LLC as defendant no. 4.

The November 2023 Ad-Interim Order and Its Terms

A predecessor bench, by judgment dated 22 November 2023, had passed three ad-interim directions. The Wire and its journalist were directed to remove the impugned article from their website, to remove related tweets from X, and — in paragraph 30(iii) — were “directed to not post, circulate or publish any similar defamatory content against the plaintiff as set out in the subject article/publication dated 09.11.2023.” The predecessor bench had observed that the article was “a litany of misrepresentations and convoluted insinuations made in a reckless manner, without any regard for the truth.”

The Wire complied with the first two directions by taking down the article and the identified tweets. It did not challenge the judgment dated 22 November 2023. However, it contested the maintainability of the entire suit and specifically sought recall of the direction in paragraph 30(iii) as a constitutionally impermissible gag order.

Whether the Article Concerned the Plaintiff's Official Duties

The Wire's central argument, drawn from the Supreme Court's ruling in R. Rajagopal v. State of T.N. (1994) 6 SCC 632, was that a public official cannot maintain a civil action for damages in relation to acts and conduct connected with the discharge of official duties — even where the publication contains untruths — unless the official can show the publication was made with reckless disregard for truth or was false and actuated by malice. On this basis, The Wire contended the suit was not maintainable at all.

The plaintiff countered that the article did not concern his official duties but focussed on his son's private business associations. He argued that even if the article touched on official conduct, the reckless disregard standard was satisfied because The Wire had omitted to mention actions he had personally initiated against the delinquent DM well before the article was published.

Justice Bhambhani applied the test drawn from the Supreme Court's ruling in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India (2005) 8 SCC 202: whether the omission or neglect on the part of the public servant to commit the act complained of could have made him answerable for a charge of dereliction of his official duty. On the plaintiff's own case, his initiating action against the DM was integral to his role as Chief Secretary. Had he not acted, he would have faced a charge of dereliction. The court therefore held that the subject article squarely related to the performance of the plaintiff's official duties.

However, the court did not stop there. The plaintiff had specifically alleged in the plaint that The Wire published the article with reckless disregard for truth, pointing to a documented timeline of administrative action he had taken against the DM before 9 November 2023: recommending a CBI inquiry on 9 August 2023, obtaining LG approval and recommending action to MHA on 20 September 2023, proposing the DM's transfer at the NCCSA meeting on 20 September 2023 (which was approved even by the then Chief Minister), and the MHA suspending the DM and directing a CBI inquiry on 20 October 2023. The Delhi High Court itself had set aside the land acquisition award by order dated 31 October 2023. None of this chronology appeared in The Wire's article published nine days later.

Justice Bhambhani held that whether the omission of these actions from the article amounted to reckless disregard for truth, or whether the article was false and actuated by malice, are questions that can only be resolved at trial, on tested evidence. On this basis, the court held that the suit is maintainable, with the plaintiff retaining an opportunity to prove his case within the exception carved out by R. Rajagopal.

The Gag Order: Why Paragraph 30(iii) Could Not Stand

The Wire pressed for recall of the direction in paragraph 30(iii) of the November 2023 order, relying on the Supreme Court's ruling in Bloomberg Television Production Services India Pvt. Ltd. v. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (2025) 1 SCC 741, which endorsed the “Bonnard standard” from Bonnard v. Perryman (1891) 2 Ch 269. That standard requires exceptional caution before granting pre-trial injunctions in defamation suits, and holds that an injunction should not issue unless the alleged libel is clearly untrue and the defendant's defence would undoubtedly fail at trial.

Justice Bhambhani agreed. The court reasoned that defamation as a legal concept is distinct from its lay meaning: every derogatory statement may not be defamatory in law because the publisher may have available defences of justification by truth, fair comment, or privilege. To presume in advance that what The Wire might publish in future would be defamatory is to act as a “soothsayer” — something no court can legitimately do. Those defences can only be assessed once a publication actually exists.

The court drew on several precedents from coordinate benches of the Delhi High Court, including Kailash Gahlot v. Vijender Gupta & Ors. 2022 SCC OnLine Del 679 and S. Charanjit Singh v. Aroon Purie 1982 SCC OnLine Del 301, both holding that what has not yet come into existence cannot be presumed to be defamatory and cannot sustain an injunction.

Justice Bhambhani therefore held that the direction in paragraph 30(iii) — restraining The Wire from publishing “any similar defamatory content” in the future — was over-broad, presumptive, and based purely on a hypothetical situation. It was accordingly recalled.

Position of X Corp. and Google LLC

X Corp. (defendant no. 3) argued that as an intermediary under Section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, it was exempt from liability under Section 79 of that Act, that “actual knowledge” triggering the exception to that exemption can only come through a court order as held in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) 5 SCC 1, and that a prospective injunction over unidentified future content cannot be directed against an intermediary. It sought deletion from the array of defendants. The court did not issue any separate direction against X Corp. in the present judgment beyond noting that compliance with the earlier take-down directions had already been stated.

Google LLC (defendant no. 4) submitted that it is purely a search engine operator, performs no editorial function, and that once the source URLs are removed from The Wire's website, those links will automatically cease to appear in Google Search results. It also argued that any prayer requiring it to identify and remove “similar” content placed an adjudicatory burden on an intermediary that belongs exclusively to a court. The court's present judgment does not separately adjudicate these contentions; the suit as a whole continues.

Outcome

Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani disposed of I.A. No. 22961/2023 on 20 July 2026 in the following terms:

• The suit CS(OS) 749/2023 is held to be maintainable. The plaintiff will have the opportunity at trial to prove that The Wire's article was published with reckless disregard for truth or was false and actuated by malice, within the framework of R. Rajagopal.
• The ad-interim directions in paragraph 30(i) and 30(ii) of the judgment dated 22 November 2023 — requiring removal of the article from The Wire's website and removal of identified posts from X — are not interfered with at this stage, as they have already been complied with. Any direction to the contrary must await the conclusion of trial.
• The ad-interim direction in paragraph 30(iii) of the judgment dated 22 November 2023, restraining The Wire from publishing any similar defamatory content, is recalled and deleted as over-broad, presumptive, and untenable in law.
• The Registry was directed to provide a copy of the present judgment along with any certified copy of the judgment dated 22 November 2023.