Supreme Court: The Division Bench of Hrishikesh Roy and R. Mahadevan, JJ., on 10-9-2024 put a stay on the impugned order of the Delhi High Court refusing to quash defamation proceedings against sitting Lok Sabha MP, and prominent Congress leader, Dr Shashi Tharoor, in connection to certain defamatory remarks made in 2018 against Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.
The Delhi High Court via the impugned order in Dr. Shashi Tharoor v. State, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 6005, dated 29-8-2024, refused to quash proceedings against Dr. Tharoor under Section 500 of the Penal Code, 1860.
Dr. Shashi Tharoor while addressing the audience at the Bangalore Literature Festival on 28-10-2018 had made an allegedly defamatory comment wherein he quoted lines from an article which had been published by the Caravan magazine which said that “Mr. Modi is like a scorpion sitting on a Shivling; you cannot remove him with your hand, and you cannot hit it with a chappal either.”
Dr. Shashi Tharoor supported the statement with his own opinions. A complaint under Section 200, CrPC for the commission of offence under Section 499/500, IPC was filed by one of the Vice Presidents (‘VP’) of the Bharatiya Janta Party (‘BJP’) wherein, he stated that the Prime Minister of India is a supreme leader of BJP and that the said statement by the petitioner was baseless, unfounded, misleading, and defamatory.
The complaint also mentioned that the unknown RSS source had allegedly made the remarks in 2012, but Dr. Shashi Tharoor made the statement in October 2018 deliberately since PM Modi was leading the country at the time as Prime Minister of India. It was said that the defamatory remark stated to have been made to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also hurt the sentiments of crores of devotees of Lord Shiva, lowered the credit and image of the VP of BJP, RSS, and tarnish the image of BJP in the eyes of the public.
The speech had been widely reported and was claimed to be an intolerable abuse and absolute vilification of the faith of millions of devotees of Lord Shiva. Further, the VP of BJP mentioned that since the media houses had published the said speech, he was visited by a person in the party office on 01-11-2018 who passed certain statements in the presence of other persons which lowered his credit and image in the eyes of others.
The single Judge Bench of Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, J., said that said that prima facie the imputations against the sitting Prime minister were despicable and deplorable and the imputations also defamed the BJP as well as its office bearers and members. The Court held that no grounds were made for quashing the proceedings under Section 482, CrPC, and permitted the proceedings to continue before the Trial Court in the interest of justice.
Counsel for the petitioner argued that the complaint was filed in connection with his utterances on 28-10-2018, where the petitioner referenced a statement published 6 years ago on 01-03-2012 in the Caravan magazine. The counsel pointed out that none had any grievance with the article and the uttered sentence, as published in the magazine; however, when the petitioner observed that this was an extraordinarily striking metaphor, the same was perceived to be a defamatory utterance by the respondents. It was further contended that members of the political party cannot also be an aggrieved party viz-a-viz the comments attributed to the petitioner. The statement in question would fall within Exception Clauses 8 and 9 of Section 499, IPC and should be considered to be made in good faith and should not be counted as defamatory.
While the respondents stated they were aware of the statement published in Caravan Magazine in 2012. However, because of the passage of time and the growing popularity of the Prime Minister and the BJP Party, the petitioner had deliberately dug out that buried statement and made it relevant for current times.
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