Anil Ambani withdraws Rs10,000-crore defamation suit against Mukesh

Within weeks of announcing a truce with his elder brother in a gas distribution dispute, Anil Ambani on Tuesday withdrew a Rs10,000-crore defamation suit against Mukesh and the New York Times (NYT) in the Bombay high court.

Anil had moved court in 2008 and alleged his brother had defamed him in an interview to the NYT, which was reproduced in two Mumbai newspapers. The suit against the newspapers has also been withdrawn. “We do not want to proceed with the suit,” Anil’s counsel DJ Kalkalia, partner of Mulla and Mulla, told the court. Justice Roshan Dalvi allowed the withdrawal of the suit.

In the interview, Mukesh was asked to comment on the Reliance group’s intelligence gathering operations. “What most distinguishes Reliance from its rivals is what Ambani’s friends and associates describe as his ‘intelligence agency’, a network of lobbyists and spies in New Delhi, which, they say, collects data about the vulnerabilities of the powerful, about the minutiae of bureaucrats’ schedules, about the activities of their competitors,” said the article published by the NYT on June 15, 2008.    

The Ambani brothers parted ways in June, 2005, and were involved in several legal battles in the ensuing period. Anil’s move to withdraw the defamation suit is another move towards reconciliation with Mukesh. On May 23, the brothers scrapped all non-compete agreements they had entered in January, 2006.
Anil and Mukesh agreed that their respective companies — RNRL and Reliance Industries Limited — will expeditiously negotiate a gas supply arrangement as per a May 7 Supreme Court verdict.