New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday stayed defamation proceedings against Lok Sabha, Member of Parliament (MP) and senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor in Delhi trial court for the ‘Modi-scorpion’ remark made by him in 2018 during the Bangalore Literary Festival.
A bench of Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice R Mahadevan termed the utterance by Shashi Tharoor ‘a metaphor’ and stayed the direction of the Delhi High Court that ordered Shashi Tharoor to appear before the trial court on September 10 and face defamation trial.
Last month, the Delhi High Court had passed a judgment dismissing Shashi Tharoor’s petition seeking quashing of defamation complaint instituted against him by a the then vice president Bharatiya Janata Party Delhi Pradesh.
The High Court in its judgment had held that the defamation petition by a political party or its worker was maintainable and as such Shashi Tharoor would have to face criminal defamation trial.
On Tuesday, advocate Mohammed Ali Khan appearing for Shashi Tharoor submitted to the court that a complaint against Tharoor was filed in 2018 for making reference to a statement published 6 years earlier in Caravan magazine. And despite the fact that the BJP worker who filed the complaint in 2018 was aware of the 2012 Caravan article, there was no grievance than, but suddenly in 2018 a defamation complaint is filed against Tharoor in 2018.
Tharoor while participating in Bangalore Literary Festival in October 2018 had commented on Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying “this personality cult has not sat very well with many in the RSS establishment. There’s an extraordinarily striking metaphor expressed by an unnamed RSS source to journalist Vinod Jose of The Caravan which I quote here, in which they express their frustration with their inability to curb Mr Modi, And the man says, “Mr Modi”, he says is like a “scorpion sitting on a Shivling; you cannot remove him with your hand, and you cannot hit it with a chappal either.”
Advocate Khan also submitted to the Supreme Court that a BJP worker cannot be said to be aggrieved person under law and the statement made by Tharoor was made in good faith and should not be construed as defamatory.
