New Delhi: In a setback to former Delhi Minister and AAP leader Satyendar Jain, a Delhi court on Thursday dismissed his defamation complaint against BJP’s New Delhi MP Bansuri Swaraj, citing a lack of grounds to take cognisance.
Special CBI Judge (Prevention of Corruption Act) Jitendra Singh said, “Sufficient ground does not exist to justify the invocation of jurisdiction for taking cognisance of the offence as defined and punishable under Section 356 of BNS. Accordingly, the instant revision petition is dismissed.”
“In the absence of any material suggesting malicious intent, it cannot be prima facie inferred that the proposed accused acted with the intention to defame or malign the complainant,” said the court.
The Special Judge dismissed Jain’s appeal against a trial court’s decision in February in which the latter had declined to take cognisance of the offence of defamation against Swaraj.
Jain, who has been named in several corruption-related cases, had alleged that Swaraj made defamatory statements against him during an interview broadcast on a news channel on October 5, 2023, with the intention to tarnish his reputation and gain undue political advantage.
The former Delhi Health Minister had filed the complaint in the Rouse Avenue Court, alleging that Swaraj had called him corrupt and had claimed the recovery of cash and gold from his residence.
Jain had contended that Swaraj’s statements were made with “malicious intent to defame him and secure undue political advantage”.
He alleged that through her specific defamatory statements, made in the context of an Enforcement Directorate raid at his house, she claimed that Rs 3 crore in cash was recovered from his house, and 1.8 kg of gold and 133 gold coins were also seized from the same location.
The BJP MP’s counsel countered Jain’s allegations, saying that the statements attributed to Swaraj were nothing more than a reiteration of information already disclosed in the public domain by the ED through its official communication via a verified social media platform.
Swaraj also claimed that she did not fabricate or distort any facts, nor has there been any independent assertion or creation of new content by them.
“The statements merely reflect and restate the contents of the ED’s official disclosure. In the absence of any willful misrepresentation or malicious intent, she cannot be held liable for the alleged offence of defamation,” said the MP.
The BJP MP said, “If at all any statement is perceived as defamatory, the liability, if any, would lie with the ED, which originally disseminated the information. She, being a secondary communicator of officially released material, cannot be fastened with criminal liability, especially in the absence of intent to harm the reputation of the complainant.”
The Special Judge said in the order, “The statement attributed to the proposed accused is a verbatim reiteration of a tweet published by the ED through its official social media handle.”
The proposed accused has neither fabricated facts nor disseminated any misleading information; rather, the statement in question merely reproduces what was officially communicated by the ED, it said.
“There is no compulsion stated/brought on record that the proposed accused had any independent means or obligation to verify the veracity of the said content, particularly as the tweet pertains to investigative findings arising from a search conducted by the ED,” said the Special Judge.
(IANS)
