The Punjab and Haryana High Court deferred the hearing in the defamation case against former Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal till March 23, giving time to complainant Rajinder Pal Singh to file his reply.
The single-judge bench of Justice Jaishree Thakur also ordered the trial court to adjourn the trial till March 23 and the hearing should be kept after the same.
Badal had filed a petition through senior advocate Ashok Aggarwal and counsel H.S. Brar challenging the order of the bailable warrant issued against him by the Chandigarh district court on November 17 in the High Court. Badal also sought direction from the High Court to quash the defamation complaint filed by Rajinder Pal Singh of the Akhand Kirtani group.
On the previous hearing, the High Court stayed the warrant and issued notice to the respondent-complainant seeking a reply to Badal’s plea.
Sukhbir Badal said in his petition that the Chandigarh district court had issued summons on March 4 against him on the basis of this complaint without taking into account the facts of the case. Bailable warrants were later issued on November 17. He said this complaint lodged against him is completely baseless as there is no defamation of the complainant anywhere in this case.
The case traces its origin to January 2017 incident when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal visited Punjab. Sukhbir Badal had then said Kejriwal was meeting militants in Punjab and had breakfast with Akhand Kirtani Jatha, which is the political front of terrorist organization Babbar Khalsa International. They do not know anything about the nature, tradition and creed of Punjab. Later, a defamation complaint has been filed against Badal.
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Sukhbir Badal claimed in the High Court that in this statement he has not even taken the name of the complainant and anyway he was also the home minister of Punjab at that time and in such a situation, it was his responsibility to look after the law and order in the state. Despite this, on the complaint lodged against him, the Chandigarh district court first summoned him and later issued bailable warrants against him, which is completely wrong.