New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the trial proceedings against senior Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor in a defamation case in connection with a 2018 remark allegedly comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a scorpion.
A bench comprising Justices Hrishikesh Roy and R Mahadevan issued notice on Tharoor’s plea and stayed the proceedings in the criminal defamation complaint against the Congress leader. Tharoor was supposed to appear before the trial court today.
Tharoor moved the top court against the Delhi High Court order of August 29, whereby his plea for quashing the defamation case was rejected.
Tharoor’s counsel submitted that his client merely quoted from an article published by a news magazine in 2012 which contained an alleged remark by an unnamed RSS leader comparing Narendra Modi to "a scorpion sitting on a Shivling".
He contended that Tharoor while speaking at the Bangalore Literature Festival in 2018, quoted this expression and termed it an "extraordinarily striking metaphor". The counsel submitted that the person quoted in a news magazine article repeated the same statement in a video on a news channel later.
The counsel argued that the complaint filed by BJP leader Rajeev Babbar did not make either the magazine or the person who made the original quote as accused.
The bench noted that it is eventually a metaphor, which indicates the invincibility of the person, and asked, can't this metaphor be understood as pointing out to the invincibility of the person? The bench orally observed why would somebody object to a metaphor?
After hearing submissions, the apex court issued notice returnable in four weeks. The High Court had declined to quash the defamation proceedings against him on a complaint over his alleged "scorpion on Shivling" remarks targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The High Court had said that prima facie, imputations like "scorpion on Shivling" against the Prime Minister are "despicable and deplorable". The complaint against Tharoor was filed by Delhi BJP vice-president Rajiv Babbar. Tharoor had sought setting aside of the trial court's April 27, 2019 order summoning him as an accused in the criminal defamation complaint filed by Babbar as well as the November 2, 2018 complaint.
