Devices seized of journalist, his son and a colleague in Adani defamation case

Hours after the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate in Ahmedabad on 17 August authorised police to search journalist Ravi Nair’s houses, two teams of Gujarat Police arrived at his houses in Delhi and in Kerala. Both police teams, reported The Newsminute, arrived at the same time around 2 pm on Monday. While it is not clear if they were flown by private or chartered planes, or if they had already reached the two places and were waiting for the authorisation, the timing and the seizures raised eyebrows.

Ravi Nair, an independent journalist specialising on political economy, has written extensively on the Adani Group and questioned its business dealings. Several of his investigative reports have been co-authored by another independent journalist, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. Both have also authored a book Flying Lies on the Rafale deal.

The complainant cited social media posts by Nair and not to the report in Washington Post which appeared in October 2025.  The report alleged that Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had made an investment of $3.9 billion in the Adani Group following directions from the union government when the industrial conglomerate was mired in financial and legal challenges. Social media posts by Nair had caused “substantial financial losses” to the Adani Group and its domestic and international investors besides inflicting reputational damage, the complainant alleged. The LIC had dismissed the report by holding that its investment decisions were made independently and not influenced by the government.

Nair in his defence had argued that his investigation was based both on documents as well as interviews with bankers and officials who were in a position to have insider information. The complainant claimed that the documents relied upon by Nair could have been forged and demanded an investigation. Nair’s counsel argued before the High Court that denial by LIC was no proof of forgery and pleaded for the FIR to be quashed. The Gujarat High Court, however, dismissed his appeal on 11 August 2026.

The Investigating Officer of the case sought permission to search Nair’s houses on the plea that crucial incriminating evidence, essential documents, and electronic devices relevant to the case could be stored at the journalist’s houses. In Kerala, the cops seized Ravi’s old and unused phones along with his pen drives and in Delhi, the police team seized his son’s laptop, as well as the laptop and iPad of his colleague Sachi Hedge, who was at Ravi’s Delhi residence at the time.

Neither his son nor Hegde are, however, connected with the case or the report published by Washington Post. A possible explanation for the sezure of the devices belonging to Nair’s son and his colleague was offered by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, who claimed to Scroll.in that the FIR was “not just to harass Ravi Nair but to find out the source of the information that he has used in the article in The Washington Post”.

Significantly, Nair alleged that the police did not share the hash values of the devices they had seized. A hash value is a numeric value that identifies data uniquely. This means that if the data on a device is tampered with after it is seized, the hash value of that device will change. The police’s refusal to share this value goes against the guidelines the Supreme Court issued in 2023 while it was hearing a petition filed by the Foundation of Media Professionals.