Court summons BJP leader Harish Khurana in defamation case, complaint against Manoj Tiwari dismissed
A Delhi court on Wednesday summoned BJP leader Harish Khurana in a defamation complaint filed by an AAP worker for his tweet in connection with the assault on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on May 4, noting 'prima facie' there are sufficient grounds to proceed against him. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, however, dismissed the complaint against Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari for his remarks to media in the matter, citing lack of "sufficient ground".
The court passed its order on the complaint of Sushil Kumar, an Aam Aadmi Party worker who alleged that Khurana as well as BJP leader Manoj Tiwari had defamed him. It directed Khurana to appear before it, saying that "prima facie there exists sufficient grounds to proceed against Khurana for making defamatory remarks on Twitter."
On Tiwari, the court said: "It is clear that Tiwari has not taken the name of the complainant in this video. The only allegation is that when he was saying these words, he showed a photo in his mobile phone, which according to the complainant is his photograph."
"I have minutely seen the video of the press conference and it is clear that the photo which he had shown in the press conference is so blurred in the video placed on record that it is not possible to identify the complainant only by seeing the video... therefore there does not exist sufficient grounds to proceed against Tiwari," the court said.
According to the complaint, on May 4, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was holding a roadshow in south Delhi parliamentary constituency for general elections when he was slapped by a person. It said that Khurana had tweeted suggesting that Kumar had assaulted Kejriwal. The complainant alleged that Tiwari had "falsely and with an intention to defame" him told the media that it was Kumar who had attacked Kejriwal.
