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Zee Media Corporation Wednesday moved the Madras High Court to set aside the interrogatories (questions raised by one party to which other party has to give written response) raised by cricketer MS Dhoni in connection with the defamation suit filed by Dhoni against Zee in 2014 over the Indian Premier League (IPL) betting scam.
The plea by Zee was filed challenging a November 11, 2022 order of a single-judge that had disallowed its prayer to set aside the interrogatories raised by the cricketer.
A bench of Justices R Mahadevan and Mohammed Shaffiq Wednesday refused to grant any interim stay on the single-judge’s order, but agreed to hear Zee’s appeal on March 13, Monday.
Dhoni had filed a defamation suit in the High Court against Zee media, IPS officer Sampath Kumar and others over alleged malicious statements and news reports which claimed that the cricketer was involved in betting and match fixing of IPL matches in 2013.
Dhoni sought to restrain the defendants including Kumar, who initially probed the IPL betting scam, from issuing or publishing defamatory statements against him related to the issue.
The High Court had at the time granted an interim injunction and restrained Zee, Kumar and others from making defamatory statements against the cricketer.
Subsequently, Zee and the others filed their written statements in the said suit. Following the written statements, Dhoni filed an application claiming that Kumar had gone on to make further defamatory statements in his written submissions and, thus, prayed that contempt of court proceedings be initiated against Kumar.
In July last year, Dhoni also sought the permission of another bench of the High Court to deliver interrogatories, a set of 17 questions, to Zee claiming that the written statement filed by the media company was “generalized and did not contain specific responses towards the allegation raised.”
That plea was allowed.
Zee then moved High Court seeking that the order granting leave to Dhoni for delivering the interrogatories be set aside.
He claimed that the interrogatories mostly contained questions which should be raised during the stage of cross-examination in the trial.
It was further submitted that interrogatories had been delivered with an intention to know Zee’s evidence in advance.
“The motive of the first respondent/plaintiff (Dhoni) to take interrogatories against the applicant (Zee) is that the first respondent/plaintiff wanted to know before hand the evidence against him and tamper with the evidence,” Zee claimed.
In an order passed on November 11, 2022, single-judge Justice G Chandrasekharan refused to set aside the order allowing the delivery of interrogatories to Zee.
The judge held that the interrogatories were raised by Dhoni only with a view to elicit further information on the averments made in Zee’s written statement.
Zee then filed the present appeal against the single-judge order.
The media house said in its appeal that the single-judge had allowed the interrogatories without weighing the balance of “unreasonableness, vexatiousness, etc.”
On Wednesday, Zee’s counsel also told the Court that the 2014 suit had been lying dormant despite the fact that charges had been framed a year ago, as Dhoni was yet to file his evidence.
Advocate Jose John appeared for Zee Media.
Senior Counsel PR Raman appeared for MS Dhoni.
