Mumbai Mar 22 PTI The Bombay High Court on Tuesday allowed an appeal filed by Invesco Developing Markets Fund the largest shareholder of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited Zee against a single-judge order granting interim injunction on holding an EGM to remove Zees CEO Punit Goenka A division bench of Justices S J Kathawalla and Milind Jadhav quashed and set aside the single bench order of October 2021 The appeal is allowed The single bench order is quashed and set aside We have held that the requisition notice sent by Invesco to Zee is neither illegal nor incapable of being set aside the court said Senior counsel Aspi Chinoy appearing for Zee sought the court to direct for a status quo to be maintained The court then directed for the status quo to be maintained for a period of three weeks The bench also said it has quashed all the observations made by the single bench in its order In September 2021 Invesco had put out a requisition to the Zee Board of Directors to hold an extraordinary general meeting EGM on the grounds that it felt the company was not running as smoothly as desired The firm sought to remove three directors from the Zees Board including Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer CEO Punit Goenka When Zee refused to respond to the requisition Invesco moved an application before the National Company Law Tribunal NCLT in Mumbai which directed Zee to consider the requisition in accordance with law Zee then approached the high court seeking a declaration that the requisition notice by Invesco to hold the EGM was illegal and invalid A single bench of Justice Gautam Patel had in October 2021 in an interim order granted an injunction against holding of the EGM Subsequently Invesco filed an appeal against the interim injunction order on the ground that the high court had no jurisdiction to hear the matter and that it ought to have been heard and decided by the NCLT PTI SP GK GK

Mumbai Jan 29 PTI The Bombay High Court has acquitted a 21-year-old man who was handed life imprisonment by a sessions court for killing a woman in 2017 observing that the evidence given by a child witness is demonstrably unreliable and insufficient for convicting the accused on the charge of murder A bench of justices SS Shinde and Milind Jadhav also held that the probe conducted by the police in the case was seriously questionable and deserves to be reprimanded with strictures The bench acquitted the man on January 27 A detailed order was made available on Saturday The accused identified as Ganesh Mandavkar a resident of Raigad district in Maharashtra was handed life imprisonment by a sessions court for murdering a woman by strangulation He had challenged the courts order before the Bombay High Court Advocate Ashish Satpute appointed by the high court from the Legal Aid Panel to represent the accused had submitted that the investigation by the police to unearth the evidence in the case was improper and inadequate He further argued that the sessions courts verdict was based on mere conjectures without appreciating the facts and circumstantial evidence on record As per the prosecution the accused had killed the woman in 2017 after she refused his demand for sexual favours Mandavkar allegedly strangled the woman with a towel while another accused who died during the pendency of the trial held the victims legs A six-year-old child had allegedly witnessed the incident as per the prosecution The bench said the witness had stated that the spot of the incident is at a walking distance of about 10 minutes which if roughly translated into the distance as the crow flies would be about 1 to 15 kilometres From such a long distance it would have been impossible for this minor six-year-old to witness the alleged incident This witness has specifically deposed that the deceased was at a far distance and that the site of the incident was not visible from that distance This statement militates against the theory of this witness being an eyewitness to the incident the bench said The evidence given by the child witness is demonstrably unreliable does not inspire any confidence and is in any case insufficient for convicting the Appellant of the offence under Section 302 IPC the bench said Further questioning the probe conducted by the police the high court held that the investigating officer has not recorded the statements andor brought forth the relevant parties as prosecution witnesses Such investigation smacks of complete incompetence and therefore deserves to be reprimanded with strictures it added The bench held that the trial court has erroneously arrived at a conclusion that the evidence given by witnesses corroborate each other on material particulars and shows that the accused had killed the woman PTI AVI NSK NSK

Mumbai Nov 24 PTI Dnyandev Wankhede father of NCBs zonal director Sameer Wankhede on Wednesday approached the Bombay High Court challenging its single-judge bench order that had refused to restrain Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik from making comments and putting social media posts against the anti-drug agency officer and his family Dnyandev Wankhede mentioned for urgent hearing his appeal challenging the single bench order and urged a division bench of Justices S J Kathawalla and Milind Jadhav to grant him relief His appeal is likely to be heard by the division bench on Thursday On Monday a single-judge bench of Justice Madhav Jamdar had refused to grant Wankhede any interim relief in his defamation suit filed against Malik a leader of Maharashtras ruling party NCP Wankhede had cited Maliks tweets and public statements whereby the latter had alleged among other things that Sameer Wankhede had been born a Muslim but had falsely claimed that he belonged to a designated Scheduled Caste SC to secure a central government job He had sought as interim relief that Malik be prohibited from making any defamatory statements or tweets social media posts etc against him Sameer Wankhede or any of their family members Justice Jamdar however had held that imposing such a blanket prohibition upon Malik was not possible in the present case The single bench had held that though it seemed apparent that Maliks statements and tweets against the NCB officer had actuated out of malice and animosity the allegations the minister had made against Sameer Wankhede did not seem prima facie on the face of it to be completely false The single bench however had directed Malik to henceforth make public statements or comments against Wankhede and his family only after reasonable verification of facts In his appeal mentioned before the division bench Dnyandev Wankhede contended that since the single bench had held that Maliks allegations against Sameer Wankhede had stemmed out of malice the minister should have been restrained from making further defamatory comments against him and his family PTI AYA NP NP