New Delhi: Leader and activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), Medha Patkar, suffered a major setback on Monday when Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena filed a defamation case against her, resulting in a five-month jail sentence. The court ordered Patkar to compensate Saxena with Rs 10 lakh.
"It is evident that the accused (Patkar) harbored a clear intention to defame the complainant through her press note, given the deliberate and calculated nature of her statements," the Court said in its order, the New Indian Express reported.
Saxena launched the defamation action against Patkar in 2001, when he was the former President of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), an Ahmedabad-based NGO.
According to the case documents, Saxena ran an advertisement in 2000 against Patkar's NBA, a movement opposed to dam construction on the Narmada River. Patkar released a press statement against Saxena after seeing the advertising being published.
The note stated that Saxena was “mortgaging the people of Gujarat and their resources before Bill Gates and Wolfensohn and he was an agent of the Government of Gujarat”.
Patkar's press note prompted Saxena to initiate a defamation suit against her in an Ahmedabad court in 2001. The case was later relocated to Delhi in 2003 on the Supreme Court's directives.
Raghav Sharma, Metropolitan Magistrate of Saket Court, who convicted Patkar on May 24, has stated that the verdict will be suspended for 30 days to allow her to file an appeal against the order in a higher court.
In the judgement, the judge stated that he refrained from imposing an excessive sentence of one or two years on Patkar, the convict in the defamation case, due to her advanced age and health.
In its ruling, the Court further explained that Patkar's clear claim that Saxena was "pained with hawala transactions" was an attempt to link him to illegal and unethical financial activities, which seriously damaged Saxena's status and reputation.
"Without providing any substantive evidence, this is a clear attempt to malign his financial integrity and create a public perception of wrongdoing, the Court opined" the court said.
According to Judge Sharma, Patkar's remarks on Saxena were not only derogatory but also meant to incite public outrage and diminish his status.