904-NMS-1220-15-F4.DOC
Dr. Veerendra V. Tulzapurkar, Senior Advocate, with Mr. Viraag
Tulzapurkar, Senior Advocate, Mr. Vikram Trivedi & Mr.
Sachin Chandarana, i/b Manilal Kher Ambalal & Co., for the
Plaintiff.
Mr. Bapoo Malcolm, for Defendant No. 1.
Ms. Sucheta Dalal, Defendant No. 2, in person
Mr. Debashish Basu, Defendant No. 3, in person.
CORAM:
DATED:
G.S. PATEL, J
9th September 2015
ORAL JUDGMENT:1.
This is an application for injunction in a defamation action
brought by the National Stock Exchange (“NSE”), one of the two
premier Stock Exchanges of this country. The NSE complains that
an article published on 19th June 2015 by Defendants Nos. 2 and 3,
Ms. Sucheta Dalal and Mr. Debashish Basu, on their online news
and analysis journal or website moneylife.in, is per se defamatory.
Ms. Dalal is the Managing Editor of Moneylife; Mr. Basu is its
Executive Editor. Their article accuses the NSE of actively
permitting, in circumstances that I will describe in somewhat
greater detail shortly, illicit trading advantages being afforded to a
select few using high-end technology. Much of what is alleged is
very technical indeed, but the NSE’s case as presented by Dr.
Tulzapurkar is that the assertions made by Ms. Dalal and Mr. Basu,
even allowing for the fact that they were based on an anonymous
letter dated 14th January 2015 addressed to the Securities &
Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) with a copy to Ms. Dalal, are in
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