The Jharkhand High Court has refused to quash proceedings in a criminal defamation case filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for calling Union Home Minister and former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah a murder accused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The order was recently passed by the single-judge Bench of Justice Ambuj Nath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The High Court noted that the statements made by Gandhi on March 18, 2018 were prima facie defamatory in nature under Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BJP leader Navin Jha had filed a complaint against Gandhi, alleging that during his speech in 2028, the Congress leader had criticised the BJP and accused Shah of being involved in a murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A magistrate court at Ranchi had earlier dismissed Jha’s complaint, after which the BJP leader filed a revision petition before the Judicial Commissioner in Ranchi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On September 15, 2018, the judicial commissioner in Ranchi overturned the order that dismissed the complaint petition and sent it back to the magistrate court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The judicial commissioner directed the magistrate to review the evidence on record again and issue a fresh order regarding the determination of prima facie material to proceed with the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The magistrate then passed a fresh order on November 28, 2018 and concluded that there was sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case against Gandhi under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which penalises defamation. Consequently, the magistrate issued summons for Gandhi’s appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Congress leader moved the High Court against the Ranchi judicial commissioner’s order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The High Court adverted to Explanation 2 to Section 499 of IPC as per which imputations against a company, association or collection of persons would fall within the scope of defamation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was evident that the expression \u201cany person\u201d in Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code included a company or association or a collection of a persons. BJP was a prominent political party, which was well identifiable and came within the meaning of Explanation-2 of Section 499 of IPC, noted the single-judge Bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advocate Kaushik Sarkhel appeared for the petitioner<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The respondents were represented by Senior Advocate Ajit Kumar, along with Advocates VK Sahu, Kumar Harsh, Abhishek Abhi, Surya Prakash and Suraj Kishore Prasad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Jharkhand High Court has refused to quash proceedings in a criminal defamation case filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for calling Union Home Minister and former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah a murder accused. The order was recently passed by the single-judge Bench of Justice Ambuj Nath. The High Court noted that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":332431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[246,68215],"tags":[1102,4988,2673,78],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/IL\/uploads\/2024\/02\/24160615\/Jharkhand-High-Court.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}