Delhi HC declines to quash defamation case against MP Shashi Tharoor
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The Delhi High Court on Thursday declined to quash criminal defamation proceedings against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, stemming from a complaint filed by BJP leader Rajiv Babbar in 2020.
The court directed Tharoor and other involved parties to appear before the trial court on September 10.
Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta ruled that there were no sufficient grounds to dismiss the defamation case against Tharoor, emphasizing the importance of allowing the trial court to continue its proceedings. The court also lifted the stay on the proceedings that had been in place since 2020, although a detailed judgment is yet to be released.
Tharoor had approached the Delhi High Court in 2020 to challenge the defamation case initiated by Babbar, which was based on Tharoor’s remarks in 2018. The Congress MP contested the summons issued by a magisterial court, which had accused him of defamation.
The case traces back to a statement made by Tharoor in 2018, where he mentioned that an unidentified RSS leader had compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a "scorpion sitting on a shivling," describing it as a "striking metaphor." Babbar subsequently filed a complaint, claiming that Tharoor's remarks hurt his religious sentiments, as well as those of "crores of Shiva devotees" both in India and abroad.