NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court of India made a big decision on Friday when it said out loud that the criminal defamation case against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor should cease. Rajeev Babbar, a leader of the BJP, filed the lawsuit because Tharoor said something in 2018 that an anonymous RSS source said compared Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a “scorpion sitting on a Shivling.”
Justices M.M. Sundresh and N.K. Singh were on the bench when Tharoor’s lawyer asked for a delay. The complainant’s counsel, on the other hand, asked for the matter to be heard on a day that was not a miscellaneous day. Justice Sundresh responded with a caustic comment. “What day isn’t miscellaneous? Let’s end this. Why do you want to be so sensitive about this? Justice Sundresh said, “Let’s end all of this.” He went on to say, “Administrators, politicians, and judges are all in the same group; they have skin that is thick enough.” Don’t worry.
The court’s comments show how judges in general view defamation cases involving public individuals. The judges’ comments suggest that they think people in public life should be able to handle criticism better and that these kinds of matters often take up a lot of court time. The matter has been going on for a long time in court. Tharoor is fighting a Delhi High Court judgment that refused to stop the defamation action against him.
The fight started at the 2018 Bangalore Literature Festival, where Tharoor was talking about his book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister. He used a metaphor from a 2012 article in The Caravan magazine during his speech. An unnamed RSS official is said to have drawn the connection. Babbar’s lawsuit said that the comment was not only false and hurtful to PM Modi, but it also harmed the religious feelings of millions of Shiva devotees.
The Supreme Court didn’t officially throw out the case on Friday, but the strong comments from the bench show that they want it to end. The court has set a hearing for another day, and the interim order will continue in place until then.