\u00a0Raigad district, India(National Times)- An Indian court has ordered the takedown of an online documentary posted by Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia accusing Prime \u200bMinister Narendra Modi and billionaire Gautam Adani of cronyism, after Adani Enterprises sued, calling it defamatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adani\u2019s flagship firm, Adani \u200cEnterprises, told the high court in the eastern city of Kolkata that the documentary, which garnered millions of views on social media in recent days, was riddled with false content and had prompted inquiries from some investors in the company, whom the court order did not name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The documentary \u201cis not a news report or an \u200baccount of proceedings. It is a dramatised narrative,\u201d the court\u2019s takedown order for YouTube, X and Meta issued late on Monday \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adani Enterprises, Modi\u2019s office and Bhatia did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did the social \u2060media companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modi\u2019s opponents have often accused the prime minister of having close ties with Adani, saying the business tycoon has received favourable \u200btreatment over the years. The Indian government and the Adani group have repeatedly denied those allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its challenge, Adani Enterprises told the court \u200bthat it does not seek to restrain constructive criticism of government policy or of business concentration, but Bhatia had suppressed material facts, according to the court order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bhatia, who is based in the US, wrote on his X account that the lawsuit demands 500 million rupees ($5.25 million) in damages. In one X post, he wrote: \u201cTruth \u200bis on my side\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI believe the documentary has rattled Adani Enterprises Limited and struck a nerve at the highest levels,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bhatia is \u200bthe co-founder of the once-popular email service Hotmail, which he sold to Microsoft in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Order to take down
In an interim order in force until January 31, 2027, the \u200ccourt ordered \u2060YouTube, X and Meta\u2019s Instagram to remove several posts of the 36-minute film, \u201cThe Friendship Files\u201d. It also restrained Bhatia from disseminating the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hearings in the case are likely to resume in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahead of the court challenge, police in the state of Maharashtra, which is led by Modi\u2019s ruling alliance, sent a takedown notice to Bhatia on October 19, saying the content \u201cmade serious unsubstantiated allegations\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modi\u2019s political opponents have repeatedly been sharing the \u200bdocumentary, saying it reflected similar \u200ballegations they had made about the \u2060two men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The film used archival footage to trace the history of the relationship between Modi and Adani, starting in the western state of Gujarat, where both men come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It raised questions about Adani\u2019s winning \u200bbid for six airports in 2019 after a government rule change that critics say favoured his enterprise \u2014 allegations \u200bsimilar to those \u2060levelled by the opposition Congress party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Adani group has denied such allegations and the government says all regulations were complied with and there is no favouritism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier, regional opposition leader and Modi critic Raj Thackeray shared the documentary on his X account, where it garnered 4.8 million views, but took \u2060it down, \u200bsaying he was doing it at the request of the Mumbai police commissioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mahua Moitra, \u200banother political opponent of Modi and a lawmaker, posted the documentary on October 11 and said it was still online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI posted this on Oct 11th. It is still \u200bon my timeline, so do watch it,\u201d she wrote on X on Monday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Raigad district, India(National Times)- An Indian court has ordered the takedown of an online documentary posted by Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia accusing Prime \u200bMinister Narendra Modi and billionaire Gautam Adani of cronyism, after Adani Enterprises sued, calling it defamatory. Adani\u2019s flagship firm, Adani \u200cEnterprises, told the high court in the eastern city of Kolkata that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n