Above: Jay Amit Shah with his father Amit Shah at his marriage reception. Photo: UNI
BJP President Amit Shah’s son Jay Amit Shah has released a statement (see below) saying that he will sue the author, editor (s) and the owners of the news portal The Wire for publishing “an article titled ‘The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah’ authored by Ms Rohini Singh. The editor of the website is Mr Siddharth Varadarajan.”
Shah Jr also says in his statement: “The article made false, derogatory and defamatory imputation against me by creating in the minds of right-thinking people an impression that my business owes its ‘success’ to my father Shri Amitbhai Shah’s political connection.”
Amit Shah’ son also says that: “I have decided to prosecute the Author Editor/(s) and the owners of the aforesaid news website for criminal defamation and sue them for an amount of Rs 100 cores. Both the actions will be fielded at Ahmedabad, where I stay, on my business and where the cause of action has arisen.”
The report that the online Portal The Wire published was about business dealings of Shah Jr and his firm Temple Enterprise Private Ltd. The allegation in the article is of the firm’s turnover growing from Rs 50,000 in March 2015 to Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-16. It also talks about an unsecured loan of Rs 15.78 crore from financial services firm KIFS.
This, The Wire imputes, was illegal and beyond the inference of logical business growth. This is an angle that has been strongly and roundly denied by no less than the railway minister Piyush Goyal, who has said in a press briefing that this was “absolutely false, baseless, malicious, derogatory, defamatory and hollow.”
The issue has become a hot discussion point in political circles, while truth of the issue has not been verified. The Congress has asked for a CBI or ED investigation, itself in a corner in the Robert Vadra land scams.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has tweeted: “We finally found the only beneficiary of Demonetisation. It’s not the RBI, the poor or the farmers. It’s the Shah-in-Shah of Demo. Jai Amit”.
Jay Shah’s lawyer has written: “Jay Shah, Jitendra Shah and their associates invested share capital and unsecured loans in this company [Temple Enterprise]. Since working capital facilities were not available to a new business/company, interest bearing Inter Corporate Deposits (ICD) were taken from time to time from KIFS Financial Services Ltd., a registered NBFC, to run this business. Tax has been deducted on the interest paid (TDS) regularly and the principal and interest amount has been repaid in full.”
—India Legal Bureau
