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PM Modi remark: Supreme Court stays defamation proceedings against Shashi Tharoor

The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the trial court proceedings initiated against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in a defamation case filed by BJP leader Rajiv Babbar over his derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice R Mahadevan issued notice to Babbar as well as the State of Delhi, directing them to file a reply within four weeks.

In November 2018 at the Bangalore Literature Festival, Tharoor had allegedly likened Prime Minister Modi to a scorpion sitting on a shivling, which could neither be killed nor brushed off by hand.

The Apex Court noted that the remark made by Tharoor was not his original statement, but was first made by Gordhan Zadaphia in an article published in Caravan magazine in 2012.

The Bench said it failed to understand why someone had taken objection to the remark since it seemed more like a metaphor alluding to the invincibility of the Prime Minister.

The Congress MP had moved the Apex Court challenging the Delhi High Court order of August 29, which refused to quash defamation proceedings. Tharoor sought an urgent hearing on the matter on the grounds that if his petition was not heard by Tuesday, he would have to appear in a Delhi court in connection with the private defamation complaint the same day.

The trial court hearing the defamation complaint against the Congress MP had issued summons directing him to appear before it on September 10 in the defamation case filed by Babbar.

Appearing for Tharoor, Advocate Md Ali Khan submitted that the High Court has expanded the definition of ‘person aggrieved’ in a defamation matter to unacceptable limits.

He asked whether a statement which was not defamatory could acquire such character almost a decade later. The counsel argued that Babbar was aware of the widely-circulated article when he made the complaint.

The Bench inquired whether there was any reference to any person in the Caravan article.

Khan submitted that the article was about the rise of the then Chief Minister. Respondent number 2 (Babbar) did not have any offence with that article in 2012. When the BJP leader filed the complaint, he left the key person (Zadaphia) out of the complaint, who was there on video as well repeating the statements.

Agreeing with Khan’s arguments, the top court noted that in 2012, the article was not defamatory. It was eventually a metaphor, which referred to the invincibility of the person referred to (Modi).

This was basically a figure of speech that used words and phrases and applied to objects and actions with no relation to them. The metaphor has to be understood in that manner, observed the Bench.

Khan then remarked that if this was allowed, the Courts would be inundated with litigation of these sorts.

The Bench then asked whether the statement covered any of the exceptions to the crime of defamation.

The counsel submitted that it was primarily in good faith. Under Section 499 IPC, only a person aggrieved could actually file such a complaint of defamation, he added.

When the Court asked whether Babbar was not aggrieved in the case, Khan replied that neither the BJP leader, nor his party were named by Tharoor. Therefore, Babbar was not at all aggrieved in this capacity.

Advocates Omar Hoda, Eesha Bakshi, Uday Bhatia, Reyna Shruti, Arjun Sharma, Kamran Khan and Gurbani Bhatia assisted Advocate Khan in the matter.

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