[Breaking] Delhi court summons 5 AAP leaders in defamation case by BJP's Chhail Bihari Goswami

A Delhi court dealing with cases of MPs and MLAs on Wednesday summoned Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Satyendar Jain, Atishi, Raghav Chadha, Sourabh Bharadwaj and Durgesh Pathak after finding a prime facie case of defamation against them [Chhail Bihari Goswami v. Satyendra Jain & Ors]..Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Ravindra Kumar Pandey summoned all the accused persons on March 14, 2022 after holding,“The Court is of the considered view that prima facie accused persons namely Satyendar Jain, Atishi Marlena, Raghav Chadha, Durgesh Pathak and Sourabh Bharadwaj have committed the offence punishable under Section 499/500 (defamation) IPC read with Section 34 (common intention) IPC.”.The complaint was filed by Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) leader Chhail Bihari Goswami who is also the chairperson of the Standing Committee of North Delhi Municipal CorporationGoswami alleged that the AAP leaders had levelled defamatory remarks against him in connection with funds of North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).Goswami contended that the politicians from AAP with a “dishonest intention” passed the remarks in order to “lower the moral and intellectual character of the complainant in the eyes of general public”. The same, it was contended, gained wide publicity in the print and electronic media..Individual allegations.It was claimed by the complainant that Pathak along with other persons held a presser in which he had made false and misleading statement claiming that there was a corruption of ₹1,400 crore in the NDMC besides alleging that the alleged property tax of sum of ₹1400 crore was illegally collected by BJP councillors and distributed among themselves; The same was stated to have been live-streamed on the AAP’s Facebook page and was published in the national dailies on November 2, 2020;.Jain purportedly made similar defamatory statements on the party’s Facebook page that were published in a national daily newspaper on December12, 2020; On December 12, 2020, Atishi was said to have held a press conference and levelled false allegations against BJP leaders regarding scam of ₹2,500 crore in the NDMC and the same was published in newspapers on the next day. She tweeted the same on January 10, 2021;.Raghav Chadha allegedly made similar defamatory statements that were published on December14, 2020; Bharadwaj was also accused of making purported defamatory statements that were published in a national daily on December 15, 2020 besides sharing the same on party’s Facebook page..Goswami examined himself besides other witnesses to support his claim during pre-summoning evidence.After hearing the arguments the Court stated,“Complainant also prima facie proved on record the publication made on social media platform like Meta Platform Inc. (formally Facebook) and publication made on twitter.”Advocates Neeraj, Priyank Khattar, Shoumendu Mukherjee, Megha Sharma, Vijay Joshi, Vicky Kumar and Satya Ranjan Swain appeared for the complainant. .[Read Order]