Rajesh Tandon vs Mohd. Safeer - 2025 Supreme(J&K) 48

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2025 Supreme(J&K) 48

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JAMMU & KASHMIR AND LADAKH AT JAMMU
RAJNESH OSWAL, J
Rajesh Tandon – Appellant
Versus
Mohd. Safeer – Respondent

Advocates:
Advocate Appeared:
For the Appellant :MR. ASHISH SHARMA, ADVOCATE.
For the Respondent:MR. Z. A. QAZI, ADVOCATE.

JUDGMENT

1. The petitioner is a reporter of daily newspaper "Early Times‟ for District Poonch. It is stated by the petitioner that the work of the petitioner is only to provide information to the head office of "Early Times‟ situated at Gujjar Nagar, Jammu and there is one more reporter of daily newspaper "Early times‟ for District Poonch, who has been assigned the same duty of reporting the news to the head office of Early Times. On 25.04.2018, a news was published in the daily newspaper "Early Times‟ that ambulance of Surankote Hospital has been turned into load carrier and most of the times, when there is any emergency, officials of hospital say that the ambulance is unavailable but the government vehicles can be commonly seen serving the officials of the department and the people are forced to look for alternatives. The issue was raised before the CMO, Poonch and he assured that he will take appropriate action.

2. After publishing of the above-mentioned news item in the Early Times newspaper on 25.04.2018, the respondent filed a complaint under Section 500 RPC, alleging therein that the petitioner in order to defame the respondent published such a news along with photographs and