{
  "slug": "insult_and_defamation_laws",
  "name": "Insult and defamation laws",
  "definition": "Laws that make it a crime, not only a civil wrong, to damage a person's reputation, to insult a head of state or a monarch (known as lèse-majesté), or to publish information that a government declares false, including laws against \"fake news\". Convictions can bring fines or prison.",
  "notes": null,
  "first_recorded_on": "2026-02-10",
  "incident_count": 1,
  "by_country": [
    {
      "country": "IN",
      "country_name": "India",
      "count": 1,
      "by_year": {
        "2026": [
          {
            "slug": "2026-india-journalist-sentenced-adani-defamation",
            "title": "India: one-year prison sentence for the journalist Ravi Nair in a criminal defamation case, February 2026",
            "occurred_on": "2026-02-10",
            "occurred_on_precision": "day",
            "country": "IN",
            "country_name": "India",
            "continent": "asia",
            "jurisdiction": "IN",
            "level": "national",
            "tactic_primary": "insult_and_defamation_laws",
            "tactics": [
              "detention_and_violence",
              "insult_and_defamation_laws"
            ],
            "leader_slug": "narendra-modi",
            "leader_name": "Narendra Modi",
            "issue_of_the_day": null,
            "outcome": "unknown",
            "outcome_on": "2026-02-10",
            "outcome_note": "Sentenced on 2026-02-10; no appeal or ruling on appeal appears in the sources cited.",
            "era": "2020s",
            "granularity": "granular",
            "status": "in_effect",
            "case_count": 0,
            "summary": "On February 10, 2026, a court in India sentenced the investigative journalist Ravi Nair to one year in prison and a fine of 5,000 rupees (about US$55) for criminal defamation, an offence under which a statement that damages someone's reputation can lead to a fine or prison sentence. The case concerned posts on the platform X between October 2020 and July 2021 and articles on Adani Watch, an Australian non-profit investigative site, that criticized the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate. CIVICUS Monitor, which tracks civic freedoms by country, recorded the sentence among arrests, detentions and police summonses of Indian journalists in the same period.",
            "url": "https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2026-india-journalist-sentenced-adani-defamation"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ],
  "downloads": {
    "csv": "https://thewaronnews.com/tactics/insult_and_defamation_laws?format=csv",
    "json": "https://thewaronnews.com/tactics/insult_and_defamation_laws.json",
    "md": "https://thewaronnews.com/tactics/insult_and_defamation_laws.md"
  },
  "license": {
    "name": "CC BY 4.0",
    "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  }
}