New Delhi: Investigative journalist Ravi Nair is reportedly lodged in Ahmedabad Central Jail in Gujarat since Thursday (September 17).In a plea in the Gujarat high court, Nair has submitted that a Gandhinagar court, which had issued a non-bailable warrant against him earlier this month in a criminal defamation case files by Adani Enterprises, had done so without issuing any formal summons or notice.The high court reportedly issued notices to the Gujarat government and Adani Enterprises on Saturday, meaning that they were supposed to respond by the next hearing, held on September 21. However, the Indian Express reports that senior counsel appearing for Adani Enterprises sought time to place “certain legal and factual aspects” on record and did not file their response.Justice M.K. Thakker on Monday adjourned Nair’s hearing until Wednesday (September 23), the new date by when the Gujarat government and Adani Enterprises are expected to file their affidavits.Nair’s counsel, Advocate Abhik Chimni, pressed for interim relief, arguing that Adani Enterprises, being a private complainant, could not seek repeated adjournments in the matter. The court did not grant such relief on Monday.Human rights organisation Amnesty International has issued a statement expressing concerning over Nair’s arrest, saying it “poses serious questions around people’s freedom of expression and fair trial rights in the country”.What happened earlierAn Ahmedabad district court had on September 3 issued a non-bailable warrant against Nair after rejecting his plea seeking exemption from physical appearance. The court said the warrant was for failing to appear.Nair’s petition, cited by Deccan Herald, explains that he had been attending all the hearings in the district court so far, but could not make it to the one on September 3. He had requested exemption for that day, which the court denied and then issued a non-bailable warrant for his arrest.When he appeared before the same court on September 17, it refused to cancel the non-bailable warrant against him, leading to his incarceration.Nair filed an application on Saturday, September 19, before the high court, challenging this arrest and seeking bail. This has been denied, while the high court has asked the Gujarat state government and the Adanis to respond.Nair is, in parallel, challenging his conviction in a criminal defamation case filed by an Adani company.Nair has stated in the petition that “on the very first occasion on which an application for exemption from his personal appearance came to be declined, without any prior notice to him and without the intermediate step of a bailable warrant being resorted to, the said warrant being returnable on the next date of hearing, namely 17.09.2026.”The petition stated that the request to suspend the order to enable him to approach the high court was also declined and he was sent to jail on the same day, reports Deccan Herald.The caseA trial court in Mansa, Gujarat sentenced journalist Ravi Nair to one year imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000 on February 10, in a case filed by the multinational Adani group. The court had also granted him a month’s stay on arrest.Adani Enterprise Limited (AEL) had filed the criminal defamation suit against Nair on September 3, 2021. Adani group alleged that Nair had posted a series of tweets from his Twitter (now X) account, from October 2020 till July 2021, involving the enterprise, which it said were ‘scandalous’ , ‘false’, ‘misleading’, ‘derogatory’ and ‘defamatory’ in nature.As AltNews has reported, 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.”Nair’s conviction in the case had come under severe criticism from media bodies and senior journalists.The use of defamation against journalistsIn September 2025, the Supreme Court noted during a hearing pertaining to The Wire that the “time had come” to consider decriminalising defamation, signalling a desire for removal of the criminal penalty.However, the law still includes defamation as both a criminal and civil offence. The BNS, 2023, did not remove the offence despite claiming to be reformist. Instead, while retaining the earlier penalties, the law now includes community service as an alternative form of punishment, and raises the punishment to up to three years, at the discretion of the court, in certain cases, such as when a group rather than an individual is seen as being criminally defamed.India ranks 157th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders. The report also mentioned the use of colonial-era laws, such as those relating to sedition, defamation and anti-state activities, to suppress the media.