News reports on RK Pachauri: Delhi High Court closes contempt case against Arnab Goswami after apology; dismisses case against Prannoy Roy

The Delhi High Court recently closed contempt of court case filed against Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami by former Executive Vice-chairman of TERI, RK Pachauri..The Court accepted the unconditional apology tendered by Goswami and disposed of the case against him. Goswami's counsel told the Court that he is tendering the apology at the outset, without going into the merits of the case and discussing its maintainability.Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora also discharged The Economic Times and its Senior Assistant Editor, Raghav Ohri. They had also tendered their apologies in the case.“Considering the fact that the Respondent Nos. 2 (Economic Times), 3 (Raghav Ohri) and 5 (Arnab Goswami) have at the outset tendered their written unconditional apology by way of their respective affidavits and have admittedly not published any further articles or aired broadcasts in contravention of the ad-interim orders, this Court accepts the said apology. Accordingly, the Respondent Nos. 2, 3 and 5 are discharged and the present petition is disposed of with respect to the said Respondents,” the Court ordered..The Bench, however, dismissed the case against former NDTV promoter, Prannoy Roy on merits.It noted that the news report carried by NDTV fell in the realm of fair reporting because Pachauri’s stand denying the allegations was duly reported in the story.Accordingly, the present petition against Respondent no. 4 (Roy) is dismissed, the Court said..Pachauri had filed a contempt of court petition before the Delhi High Court in February 2016, against several media houses for “deliberately and contemptuously” disobeying the court’s orders restricting them from publishing sexual harassment claims against him.He said that he was being subjected to media trial and that the reports carried by the publications were defamatory and prejudicing his case.At the time of filing the petition, Goswami was the editor of Times Now and Roy was executive co-chairperson of NDTV.Pachauri was accused of sexually harassing a colleague when he led the research group TERI. He passed away on February 13, 2020..Advocate Ashish Dixit appeared for RK Pachauri.Senior Advocate Malvika Trivedi as well as advocates Aman Avinav and Rahul Tyagi represented Goswami.Senior Advocate Siddharth Aggarwal with advocates Milanka Chaudhury, Naina Dubey and Ravneet Singh appeared for Prannoy Roy.Advocate Ashish Verma appeared for The Economic Times and Raghav Ohri. .[Read Order].Arnab Goswami tells Delhi High Court he will tender unconditional apology in contempt of court case by late RK Pachauri