Hearing a petition filed by BJP’s veteran leader LK Advani in 2007 challenging the defamation case proceedings against him in a case filed by arms dealer Abhishek Verma, son of former Congress MPs Shrikant Verma and Veena Verma, the Punjab and Haryana high court on Tuesday issued fresh notices to Verma.
The case came up for hearing before the court headed by justice Jaspal Singh who posted the case for December 8. Senior advocate Satya Pal Jain appeared for Advani.
Verma, a Gurgaon resident, had filed the defamation case against Advani in 2007 in a Gurgaon court alleging that Advani had publicly levelled charges against him of acting as middleman in the Navy war room case known as Scorpene submarine deal case.
In this case, a number of classified documents were allegedly stolen from the navy war room and were leaked to Thales company, the manufacturer of Scorpene submarines, so as to enable it to clinch a three billion Euro submarine deal with the navy in 2005.
However, Advani had mentioned in his petition that at that time as a leader of opposition he had just raised the demand for an inquiry in the defence scam at a press conference in Delhi and that Verma was the main accused in the case.
Jain had argued that there was no question of defamation and Advani had just sought the inquiry. Though the high court had stayed the Gurgaon court proceedings in the case for the last seven years, since nobody was appearing for Verma, the court issued fresh notices to him.
{{/usCountry}}Jain had argued that there was no question of defamation and Advani had just sought the inquiry. Though the high court had stayed the Gurgaon court proceedings in the case for the last seven years, since nobody was appearing for Verma, the court issued fresh notices to him.
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