Delhi HC stays proceedings in defamation case against Arvind Kejriwal

Delhi High Court on Tuesday stayed the proceedings in a criminal defamation case filed against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for re-tweeting an allegedly defamatory video circulated by a YouTuber in May last year.

Justice Suresh Kait also sought the response of the complainant Vikas Sanskrityayan seeking his response on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kejriwal’s plea challenging the summons issued to him in the case by a trial court.

Arvind Kejriwal had moved the high court challenging both the summoning order passed by the magistrate and that by the sessions judge who rejected his revision against the trial court’s order.

Appearing for Kejriwal, senior advocate Vikas Pahwa said that there were 11,114 people who either commented, retweeted or liked Dhruv Rathee’s tweet, on the date of filing the complaint, but the complainant chose to file a defamation complaint only against Kejriwal for vested reasons.

Following the arguments, the court stayed the defamation proceedings till January 30, 2020.

The magisterial court had summoned Kejriwal to appear before it on August 7, after a criminal complaint by Vikas Sankrityayan, the founder of social media page “I Support Narendra Modi”.

Sankrityayan had alleged that the AAP leader had re-tweeted the defamatory YouTube video.

He had said the video was circulated by Rathee, who lives in Germany, “wherein a number of false and defamatory allegations were made”.

Kejriwal, he said, had re-tweeted the video without checking its authenticity.