Zee News on Saturday said it has sent a Rs 150 crore defamation notice to Congress MP and industrialist Naveen Jindal, who too had filed a Rs 200 crore case against the media conglomerate claiming the TV channel had tried to extort money from his company.
“Zee News has granted a three-day time period to Naveen Jindal to withdraw all his unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations against Zee News, failing which Jindal would face civil and criminal actions initiated by Zee News,”it said in a statement here.
On October 25, Jindal, who is the chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) had claimed that the Zee News group attempted to “extort” Rs 100 crore from the firm for not airing stories against it on coal block allocation.
Jindal had released a CD claiming that it has records of attempts by Zee editors to strike a purported deal with JSPL.
On Thursday, JSPL had filed a defamation suit for Rs 200 crore against four executives of Zee at Mumbai High Court.
“Notices for which have already been issued to Subhash Chandra, Puneet Goenka, Sudhir Chaudhary and Sameer Ahluwalia of Zee News and Zee Business. The case is likely to come for hearing next week at Mumbai High Court,” the company said.
However, the Zee group said, “Zee News has condemned and completely rejected the doctored evidence produced by Jindal. Zee News sees this as a deliberate attempt to malign the trustworthy television network.”