Bharat Biotech vs The Wire: Key Details of the Case

Insight  Bureau: A Telangana court has directed news portal The Wire to take down 14 articles it had published on its website on biotechnology company Bharat Biotech, which manufactures Covid-19 vaccine Covaxin.

The court has given the news portal 48 hours to remove the articles.

An additional district judge of the Ranga Reddy District Court also restrained the news portal from publishing any “defamatory content” about Bharat Biotech.

The court passed the order on a Rs 100 crore defamation suit filed by Bharat Biotech against The Wire, its publisher and non-government orgaisation Foundation for Independent Journalism, the website’s editors MK Venu, Siddharth Vardarajan and Sidharth Bhatia, and nine others who wrote the articles.

It could not be ascertained which articles Bharat Biotech had objected to, as a detailed order of the case is not available yet.

At the hearing, Senior Counsel K Vivek Reddy, appearing for Bharat Biotech, argued that The Wire had published the articles that contained false allegations against the company and its vaccine with an “malicious intent” to undermine its reputation.

He contended that the news portal published the articles on vaccine authorisation and approvals without doing a proper fact check

Reddy submitted that Bharat Biotech has previously developed several vaccines for diseases such as Zika Rotavirus, Tuberculosis, Chikungunya and Typhoid. He said that the company has received national and global recognition and has collaborated with leading Indian institutions to develop the vaccines.

The court noted that Bharat Biotech is the only company that has been authorised to manufacture coronavirus vaccines for children between 15 and 18 years. It added that the “defamatory articles” would lead to vaccine hesitancy.