904-NMS-1220-15-F4.DOC Valley Project. The relevant statement is set out in paragraph 5 of the report. The Court accepted the argument that unlike English law on the subject, where a mere plea of justification would be sufficient to dislodge the interim application, in India, the defendants must also produce sufficient material supporting their contentions and the Court is certainly entitled to scrutinize these. Should substance be found in this material then the plea of justification in defence is proper. Much case law was cited in this regard before the Court, which held that the article complained of may be justified in the public interest if it be shown that the defendants had taken every reasonable precaution of ascertaining the truth. The defendants must therefore show on material available that a reasonable person could come to the conclusion that the comments made and complained of were not mala fide. I am not here concerned of course with the tone of the comments but only with an examination of whether the comments made by the Defendants before me today can be said to be defematory as Dr. Tulzapurkar insists they are. 15. Ms. Dalal and Mr. Basu appeared in person. They have each presented their written submissions. I have taken these on record and permitted them to read them in Court. They contain much that is, perhaps understandably, generalized and not strictly speaking in the nature of legal submissions. I will refer to only such portions as are necessary for our purposes. 16. The single most important factor that strikes me in this particular case, quite apart from the technical aspects of it, is the enormous time gap between the receipt of the anonymous letter in 14 of 30 ::: Uploaded on - 10/09/2015 ::: Downloaded on - 03/02/2020 18:08:37 :::

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