Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor has filed a criminal defamation case against Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad for saying the Congress MP has been “chargesheeted in a serious allegation of murder”.
Prasad had made the statement at a media conference on October 28 in New Delhi when he launched an attack on Tharoor for a speech he made at the Bangalore Literary Festival a day earlier.
While introducing his latest book The Paradoxical Prime Minister, Tharoor had said in Bangalore: “There’s an extraordinarily striking metaphor expressed by an unnamed RSS source to the journalist Mr Vinod K. Jose of The Caravan. The RSS source said Modi is like a scorpion sitting on a Shiva Linga. You cannot remove him with your hand and you cannot hit it with a chappal either.”
In his reaction the following day, Prasad had lashed out at the MP by seeking an explanation from Congress president Rahul Gandhi for the comment.
“Mr Shashi Tharoor is chargesheeted in a serious allegation of murder. I don’t want to give him more respect and prestige by responding to his baseless allegations…,” Prasad had told a media conference in New Delhi. A copy of the video has been filed with the petition.
On the same day, Prasad had tweeted: “Shashi Tharoor who is accused in a murder case has attempted to disrespect Lord Shiva.”
The reference to “murder” is being viewed against the backdrop of the death of Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar in 2004.
In his petition, Tharoor said the report filed before a Delhi court by Delhi police has charge-sheeted him under IPC Sections 306 (abetment of suicide) and 498A (cruelty to women), none of which amounts to a murder case as had been accused by Prasad.
The petitioner made a plea that Prasad had “committed an offence under Section 499 of the IPC (defamation)”.
“The final report does not say that the death of the deceased was a murder. As such, the complainant is facing the trial and is ready to prove his innocence before the court of law,” said the petition filed before chief judicial magistrate in Thiruvananthapuram on December 7.
The petitioner stated that the video clip “makes it abundantly clear that the accused purposefully lied to the public with culpable and malicious intention to defame” Tharoor.
Tharoor contended that the minister made the statement to gain political mileage ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
“At any rate, the intention and purpose behind the accused’s false and baseless imputations against the complainant is clearly to harm, tarnish and malign his reputation and to destroy the impeccable image that the complainant enjoys among the public, especially in view of the oncoming Lok Sabha elections,” the petition said.
Tharoor had last year filed a similar criminal defamation case against editor-in-chief of Republic TV Arnab Goswami. He had accused Goswami of linking him with the death of his wife.
The chief judicial magistrate of Thiruvananthapuram had recently summoned Goswami to appear before the court on February 28 in connection with the defamation case.
