New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday extended by four weeks the stay on trial court proceedings against Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in a defamation case. This case is related to the defamation petition filed against the alleged ‘scorpion on Shivalinga’ comment targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and SVN Bhatti gave four weeks time to Delhi Police and the complainant to file their response to Tharoor’s plea. “The interim order (staying the defamation proceedings) will continue,” the bench directed.
The lawyer appearing for Delhi Police argued that the main issue of this case is whether the complainant Rajiv Babbar is the aggrieved party? Babbar is a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The apex court had on September 10 stayed the proceedings before the trial court in the defamation case filed against Tharoor.
The Congress MP has moved the apex court against the High Court’s August 29 order. The High Court had refused to quash the defamation proceedings against Tharoor. Tharoor had sought quashing of the trial court’s April 27, 2019 order summoning him as an accused in the criminal defamation complaint.
Babbar had filed a complaint against Tharoor in the lower court and claimed that the Congress leader’s statement had hurt his religious sentiments. Tharoor had claimed in October 2018 that an unnamed RSS leader had compared Modi to a “scorpion sitting on a Shivalinga”.