NEW DELHI: A court has summoned BJP legislator Vijender Gupta in a defamation case filed by AAP’s Pankaj Gupta against him for his alleged defamatory comments against the party.
Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Vaibhav Mehta said the tweet made by the BJP functionary would lower the esteem of the complainant’s party in the eyes of the common people and would be, prima facie, defamatory.
The complaint was filed after the Rohini MLA allegedly made certain defamatory statements on his Twitter handle by sharing a video and tweeting that AAP indulged in hooliganism, attacked a woman, and wilfully ignored women’s safety issues, promoting violence against women.
The video showed two women coming out of a car and one of them being pulled aside by three-four miscreants and being kicked by them, following which a third woman came out of the car and was beaten up mercilessly with sticks by other miscreants.
The court said watching the video and reading the tweet along with it gave an impression that the miscreants indulging in gundagardi were somewhat associated with AAP. Vijender could have simply highlighted the incident and raised genuine questions on women’s security in the national capital rather than trivialising it, the judge observed on Wednesday.
“The said tweet cannot be stated to have been made in good faith,” the court said, adding that as per IPC Section 52, nothing is said to be done in good faith if done without due care and caution.
A preliminary inquiry has been conducted by examining the complainant and his witnesses and sufficient grounds exist to proceed against the respondent under Section 499 (defamation) IPC, Mehta said. The tweet, read along with the video, “would lower the esteem of the complaint’s party in the eyes of common people”, the court observed.
The court directed the BJP functionary to appear before it on July 20.
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