Defamation case against Amit Shah passed on to metropolitan magistrate court

KOLKATA: A designated MP/MLA court on Monday forwarded a case of defamation brought against Union Home Minister Amit Shah by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee to the Metropolitan Magistrate Court here over jurisdiction issues.

The court, which had issued summons to Shah to either appear personally or through a counsel on Monday, took note of his lawyer Brajesh Jha's submission that the address of the home minister mentioned in those was incorrect.

Banerjee's lawyer Sanjay Basu said two addresses were then provided to the court, one of Delhi and another of Ahmedabad.

The address provided earlier by the complainant was of the BJP office in Kolkata.

Hearing both the parties, the special judge directed that the matter be sent to the Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Kolkata since the addresses were beyond the MP/MLA court's jurisdiction.

The designated MP/MLA cases court at Bidhannagar had on February 19 issued summons to Shah in connection with the defamation case lodged against him by Abhishek, who is the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

Basu had claimed that Shah made certain defamatory statements against the TMC MP on August 11, 2018 at a BJP rally in Kolkata.