New Delhi
The Rouse Avenue Court on Wednesday exempted Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal from personal appearance and directed him to appear before it on February 29, 2024 in a criminal defamation case.
The Delhi High Court on Monday, refused to quash a summons order issued by the trial court in a criminal defamation case registered against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for retweeting a video of YouTuber and social media influencer Dhruv Rathi in May 2018. Justice Swarna Kanta, while passing an order, held that retweeting content that is allegedly defamatory on the Twitter account and projecting it to be as if his own views will prima facie attract liability under Section 499 of IPC for the purpose of issuance of summons.
Therefore, this Court finds no infirmity with the impugned orders passed by the learned trial court as well as the learned session court. Accordingly, the present petition stands dismissed, said Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma.
On May 7, 2018, Dhruv Rathee published on his Twitter account an allegation that the Information and Technology Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party had attempted to bribe a person to defame Dhruv Rathee and, he had drawn a reference to the Uniform Resource Locator of the first impugned publication, which has now been termed ‘Second Offending Publication’ in the petition. On February 28, 2019, a complaint was filed by the complainant/respondent Vikas Sankritayan against the petitioner, Arvind Kejriwal, for initiating proceedings against. In the matter, the trial court summoned Arvind Kejriwal as an accused by the ACMM with summoning order dated July 17, 2019. Against the trial court order, Kejriwal had moved the High Court, seeking quashing of the summons issued against him as an accused in the case.
