New Delhi: A sessions court in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, on Thursday (September 24) granted regular bail to journalist Ravi Nair who was arrested in connection with a criminal defamation case for his reportage on the Adani Group. Earlier today, he also approached the Supreme Court seeking release from prison, Bar and Bench reported.The development comes a day after the Gujarat high court reserved its verdict on Nair’s challenge to the arrest warrant, refusing to grant him interim relief, which meant he would remain in jail at least till September 30.Nair has reportedly been lodged in Ahmedabad Central Jail in Gujarat since Thursday, September 17, after a Gandhinagar court had issued a non-bailable warrant against him earlier this month citing non-appearance in the case filed by Adani Enterprises, which Nair has alleged was done without issuing any formal summons or notice. On February 10, 2026, the Judicial Magistrate First Class, Mansa, held Nair guilty in the defamation suit filed by Adani Enterprises on September 3, 2021. The Mansa court had convicted and sentenced him to undergo simple imprisonment for a term of one year and to pay a fine of Rs 5,000. Nair had moved an appeal before the sessions court against this.The journalist had subsequently challenged his conviction in an appellate court in Gandhinagar, which granted him bail on March 9, on the condition that he remains present during the hearing of his appeal.Per Nair’s petition, he had been attending all the hearings in the district court so far, but could not make it to the one on September 3 due to poor health, his lawyers told The Indian Express, as he had to travel from his native state Kerala. He had requested exemption for that day. When he appeared before the same court on September 17, it refused to cancel the non-bailable warrant against him, leading to his incarceration.In their defamation suit, Adani Enterprises had alleged that Nair published and disseminated a series of tweets containing false and defamatory statements intended to damage the reputation of AEL and the Adani Group. AltNews has reported that Nair’s lawyers had “argued that the tweets were in good faith as they were based on research done from articles already available in the public domain. They argued that since the accused didn’t come up with the accusations on his own, and he merely shared those links, and as the authors of the mentioned articles haven’t been implicated in the trial, so Ravi Nair should also be acquitted from the charges.”Several human rights organisations, press bodies and senior journalists have condemned Nair’s arrest. Amnesty International issued a statement, saying Nair’s arrest “poses serious questions around people’s freedom of expression and fair trial rights in the country”.