Divya Spandana has won a defamation case against Asianet and its subsidiary Suvarna News channels for wrongfully linking her in the IPL match-fixing case of 2013. The court has ordered the channels to pay the actress-politician rupees fifty lakhs as damages. This is regarding the channels posting Divya's image while reporting the case that two Kannada actresses are involved without mentioning her name.

Divya had filed defamation and sought compensation of ten crore rupees but the court has awarded her something much lesser than that considering her position. Judge Patil Nagalinganagouda in his order has stated "On perusal of the records, it is clear that plaintiff has blemishless records and known as good actress in Kannada film industry and she has also worked as Member of Parliament".

The judge added ""the test to be applied for determining the question whether a statement is defamatory is to be found from the answer to the question 'would the words tend to lower the plaintiff in the estimation of right-thinking members of society?". If the answer is yes, then it has to be held that the statement is defamatory. "..there are no records produced on behalf of the defendant to show plaintiff being a brand ambassador of Royal Challengers Bangalore Team was involved in betting and spot fixing scandal as transmitted in the questioned program by the defendants. Hence, this Court is of the opinion that act of defendants is in complete violation of the journalistic ethics and deliberately to destroy the popularity of the plaintiff and act of defendant is mala fide with an intention to defame her dignity", observed the Court. "It is settled principle of law that reputation is the most valuable asset of a person. It is much more valuable than any amount of money. When the above said questioned program/still images do have the tendency to destroy such reputation, the injury complained of by the plaintiff would be irreparable",