On Tuesday, the Supreme Court stayed the criminal defamation proceedings against senior congress leader and parliamentarian Mr Shashi Tharoor. This came after Tharoor challenged the Delhi court order, compelling him to appear in a defamation case related to the Congress MP’s remarks in 2018, in which he allegedly said that the prime minister is a scorpion. Therefore, the ruling timing was most appropriate since it coincided with the day Tharoor had to appear before the trial court.
A division bench consisting of Justice Hrishikesh Roy and R Mahadevan also issued a notice to BJP Leader Rajiv Babbar, Whoever filed a complaint against Shashi Tharoor for comments in Bangalore Literature Festival regarding ‘scorpion on Shivling’ referring to the PM. The bench demanded the response of the Delhi Police and set the next hearing four weeks from the date of the current hearing.
In the short burst of the hearing, Tharoor’s lawyer, Muhammad Ali Khan, noted that ‘Babbar or any other BJP cannot be termed as an aggrieved person under defamation law and more so, when the person directly affected and targeted under the alleged statement made has not initiated anything in this regard’. Nonetheless, Khan argued that Tharoor’s statements were under the immunity clause of the defamation law that shields anybody or statement from being charged if it has been made in good faith. He said that Tharoor’s statement was sourced from the article released in 2012 about Modi when he was occupying the position of Chief Minister for the Gujarat state.
Tharoor had earlier sought a dismissal of the case. However, the Delhi High Court denied on August 29, stating that the ‘imputations against a sitting Prime Minister are despicable and deplorable for tarnishing the image of the BJP and its officials’. After losing in the High Court, Tharoor turned to the Supreme Court, where he found some measure of legal redemption.
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