Responding to a story by TheWire.in last week that Minister of Coal and Railways Piyush Goyal sold all stocks of a private company owned by he and his wife at 1000 times the face value to a group firm owned by Ajay Piramal, the Piramal Group has said in a statement that the story was “inaccurate and libelous”. They have also threatened the news website with “defamatory action”.

The story reported that the sale happened in September 2014 when Goyal had been a minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet for four months but had not made no mention about the company in his declaration of assets and liabilities that is mandatory for public servants under Section 44 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013.