A Delhi court today granted bail to Delhi minister Atishi Marlena in the criminal defamation case filed by Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) media head Praveen Shankar Kapoor for levelling allegations against BJP of poaching AAP MLAs.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Tanya Bamniyal granted bail to the AAP leader, who had physically appeared before the court, directing her to file a bail bond of Rs 20,000 and one surety of the like amount. Senior Advocate Ramesh Gupta and Advocate Shailendra Singh, appearing for Atishi sought time to scrutinise the documents before arguing in the case.
The Delhi court has now scheduled the matter for further hearing on August 8. Praveen Shankar Kapoor had approached the court on April 29, this year, stating that after the case was registered by the CBI and ED regarding the now scrapped Delhi liquor excise policy, AAP and its leaders levelled allegations against BJP.
After hearing the testimonies of the complainant witnesses, the court had on May 28 issued summons to Atishi. Simultaneously, the court did not issue any summons to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
While summoning Atishi, the court said that it appears that alleged accused no. 1 (Atishi) by her spoken words and by words which were intended to be read have made defamatory imputations which prima facie have lowered the reputation of the complainant amongst the right- thinking members of the society and the same has been made knowing and intending to harm the reputation of the complainant.
The court further observed that the testimony of the complainant’s witnesses prima facie show that the defamatory utterances and statements were made by Atishi. The BJP in April had sent a defamation notice to Atishi following her claim that she had been approached to join the saffron party or face arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) within a month.