The amounts being sought as damages by corporate entities in India against publications which have allegedly defamed them are reaching stratospheric levels, even if the chances of recovering such sums of money appear rather remote. In what could be the biggest defamation notice of its kind, BSES Limited, a company in the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), has sought a stupendous Rs 5,000 crore as damages from Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL), publishers of the Times of India, the most widely circulated English daily in the world.

On August 18, the ToI carried a series of articles – including one on its front page – by Josy Joseph based on a draft report of the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) that found various discrepancies in the accounts maintained by electricity distribution companies in Delhi. The same day Mulla & Mulla and Craigie Blunt & Caroe, a firm of lawyers acting on behalf of BSES Rajdhani Power Limited and BSES Yamuna Power Limited (both part of BSES Ltd of the ADAG), served a notice of defamation on BCCL.