Five persons associated with news portal 'The Wire', who were made accused in a defamation case by BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jay over a report about his company's soaring fortunes after the saffron party came to power at the Centre, today appeared before a city court.

Those who appeared before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S K Gadhvi were author of the article, Rohini Singh, founding editors Siddarth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M K Venu, and managing editor Monobina Gupta.

Two others - public editor Pamela Philipose and a representative of the Foundation for Independent Journalism, the non-profit company that publishes 'The Wire', could not appear citing different reasons.

They were subsequently served summonses by the court and asked to appear before it on December 16, the next date of hearing.